


the world keeps changing (but the patterns stay the same)

by Writeous



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Families, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues, New Game Plus, Persona 5 Protagonist Has A Palace, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 08:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writeous/pseuds/Writeous
Summary: Akira Kurusu can be described as many things: a delinquent, a friend, a rival, a student, a leader, both a hero and a villain, on and on and on in an endless series of adjectives. It’s easy to collect titles, after all, when you’ve lived through the same year twenty times in a row.On his twenty-first loop, he awakens to a monumental change: for the first time, the rest of the Phantom Thieves remember the previous year as well. Together, they might actually have a chance to defeat Yaldabaoth and break the endless cycle.Now, if only Akira could actually summon his personas.
Relationships: Kurusu Akira & Phantom Thieves of Hearts, Persona 5 Protagonist & Phantom Thieves of Hearts
Comments: 49
Kudos: 483





	1. Chapter 1

Joker stands in the shadow of a god. It’s not his first time doing so and he already has a sinking feeling that it won’t be the last, but he can feel the terror of his teammates like it’s a physical thing, constricting his chest. Years have passed since the last time he’s stood here. Wind whips through his hair, and he has to dig his heels in to not be swept away by the shifts from Yaldaboath’s great wings. The corners of his vision are tinged red, framed by the spindly arches of Mementos and his own blood leaking down his forehead and onto his mask. He’s stronger than ever, and power thrums within him. His personas ache against his mind, desperate to fight. 

Despite it all, he feels impossibly small, eclipsed beneath Yaldabaoth. Even in the midst of battle, adrenaline running through his veins and heart thumping uncontrollably, he feels the oppressive hopelessness of their task, nothing but a mere mortal in the face of impossible odds. Queen makes a distressed noise beside him, the hope Joker has tried so hard to nurture within her failing when they need it most. Fox hisses in protest, an echo of his namesake, as Yaldabaoth rises above them, blocking out the sky and casting the entire world into shadow. The Phantom Thieves’ attacks bounce off of its skin and back onto them, succumbing to their own weaknesses. It casts magic that immediately sows insanity within their ranks, and Joker watches in horror as Noir attacks Panther with a deranged snarl, a deadly force with no need for the sweet package. With one swipe of Yaldabaoth's sword, they all crash to the ground. Joker can already taste the failure, heavy on his tongue, and it causes a rush of uncontrollable loathing. 

He’s not sure who it’s directed at, because the thing is, he’d actually _tried_ this time. 

Yaldabaoth looks down upon them, its blank mask revealing nothing. A parody of a laugh scrapes out of it, drowning out the shouts of the masses below. Voices, closer. The rest of the Thieves? They don't matter. All that does is the god of control, playing its meaningless games with their lives.

“Trickster,” it says in something that’s almost a purr, a blood-stained shark carelessly attempting to comfort a helpless child. Joker snarls. “How many lifetimes do you insist upon falling to me?”

Joker wants nothing more than to rip off his mask, call all of his personas forth, release _hell_ upon the being that has been torturing him for decades. Instead, he’s trapped under the weight of its wrath, the confusion of his teammates. He’s failed them, _again_. His voice chokes off, defiant words refusing to break free. The five stages of grief indeed, all achieved in less than two minutes.

What comes out is a weak, “Why?” Why keep resetting time? Why choose him, of all people? Why control the innocent people below? Why? Why? Why?

“Why not?” Yaldabaoth answers, measured and sadistic. Why not let them all go? Why not end the cycle? Why not just kill them once and for all, instead of toying with its prey?

In a moment, the rest of the world drains away, leaving nothing but pain and darkness behind. Gossamer wings fill his vision, the pinpricks of light cerulean and calm. A familiar child’s voice, frantic. “Trickster,” it whispers, only a fleeting thought as the delicate butterfly flutters before him. “The World still awaits you. Your chances of winning are yet naught.”

Such a vote of confidence. He’s too exhausted to play this game again.

He dimly registers Morgana's gasp. “Lady Lavenza?”

Joker ignores him. In the loneliness of his own mind, he responds, “I’m not the Trickster you want, Lavenza.”

“Perhaps not,” she says. “You are not - you are still _human_ , my Trickster.”

“Am I?”

“Humans aren’t meant to be alone. I did not expect for you to suffer for my own mistake.” A pause. The butterfly lands in front of him, its pale eyes gazing balefully into his own. “I - I apologize.”

“If you really wanted to apologize, you would finally just _let me d_ -”

Akira wakes up on a train. It rumbles underneath him, rattling his teeth as it bumps against the railroad. His bag teeters dangerously on his knees when he lets go in favor of burying his face in his hands. He curls his fingers tightly into his hair, tugging down painfully on his bangs. The muffled shout of frustration is involuntary, but he ignores the jumps of the people packed around him and the awkward silence that immediately ensues at his tangible rage.

He can’t bring himself to care. He hasn’t in a long, long time.

Leaving at the next stop is nothing but habit, following a script he’s long since memorized. People jump out of his way as he storms out, anxious to escape his warpath.

Warpath? That’s funny. Goro would laugh.

Akira all but bursts onto the Yongen-Jaya square, the hub of people aimlessly buffeting around him. The familiar buildings do nothing but make him curl his fists, shoulders shaking. The city seems to be mocking him, clean and bright as always. Lavenza had never stepped in like that before. She’s always just passively allowed the cycle to continue, letting him continuously die and retry for an impossible mission. What could have possibly convinced her to finally speak up? Was this her idea of mercy, or was she just like her master all along, wanting nothing more than to watch him suffer?

For a moment, he lets his anger consume him, the need to burn everything down until Tokyo matches his own mood almost unbearable. He has to feel this way, channeling his rage because right now, if he doesn’t -

It doesn’t matter, not now. If he’s still this furious when Arsene finally appears, he might actually die. Metaphorically and literally. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket, the familiar announcement of the MetaNav opening. He waits.

And continues waiting.

People continue walking, glaring at him as they pass for daring to stand in their way. They go about their mediocre lives with no regard to what had just - what _will -_ happened, minds blank with ignorance as they follow their predictable paths. None of them freeze in place. No blue fire appears, blazing hot enough that Akira feels it across the square. Arsene’s piercing gaze doesn’t stare into his soul, matching demonic grins. A promise of endless pain and grief and freedom to come.

Nothing happens. In a flash of panic, Akira caves and pulls out his phone, frantically scrolling through his apps to find the familiar red eye. The Metaverse Navigation should be on the second page, the third app across in the fourth row, because that’s _always_ where Akira puts it. 

There’s a weather app in its stead. A plain, boring weather app, that blankly tells him the temperature when he opens it. He closes it down and refreshes his phone, as if that would do literally anything at all. Predictably, it does not. His magic app does not subscribe to the rules of his regular phone.

Is _this_ what Lavenza meant when she’d called him a mistake?

Whatever. _Whatever_. It didn’t matter. He could deal until it finally appeared. So what if he couldn’t access the Metaverse. He hadn’t wanted to anyway. He deserved a break after the disastrous end of that last loop.

(Although, the ability to tear through some shadows right now was phenomenally tempting. It had taken him a while to come around to Goro’s perspective, but viciously destroying shadows until there was nothing left but black dust and agonized screams was cathartic in a way that nothing else could ever be.)

Unwilling to delay any longer, Akira pockets his phone and uproots himself from the street. Retracing his way to Leblanc is muscle memory. He walks straight past the gruff officer and squabbling pedestrians, turning automatically down the side street to the familiar doorway. Akira has lived in that dingy cafe longer than he has anywhere else, could find it in his sleep. 

He hesitates outside the door, hand hovering over the knob. Sojiro would scold him for blocking the way for any of his non-existent customers. Instead, he breathes, slowly in and out, deep in his lungs the way Makoto had once taught him a long, long time ago. 

He shoulders the door open, dragging his suitcase in behind him. The bell dings cheerfully to announce his arrival, but for once, nobody bothers to even glance at the entrance. Instead, all of them are focused on the spectacle happening at the base of the stairs. Akira stares with them, gobsmacked, at the flurry of orange hair that is speaking too quickly to be legible. 

She finally manages to look behind Sojiro, who stands frozen in place. She lights up, yelling Akira’s name as she sprints around her father. She all but tackles him, and he staggers back under her weight, unready for an arm full of frenzied teenage girl. _Especially_ this particular teenage girl.

Futaba should still be locking herself up in her room for months, _why is she_ -

“Akira!” she shouts, breathless, face only inches away from his. “ _Akira, we were all fighting and then I just woke up in my bed and I couldn’t find anybody’s contacts in my phone so I came to find you here but it was just like before when nobody thought I existed and then I couldn’t find you and the attic was all messy which meant you hadn’t even arrived yet but that didn’t make any sense so then I checked the date and it’s_ April _and_ I think we’re stuck in a time loop!”

Akira gapes at her, speechless. She looks back at him, panting after her rant. Her eyes are wide, panicked but expectant, always prepared for him to have the _answers_ , but the only thing he can think in the moment to respond with is, “Yeah, no _shit_.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was actually planned to be much longer, but then I was hit with the harsh reality as to how exactly to fit as many characters as this scene required into a reasonable length.

Akira has never been one for cliched metaphors, but the best way he could think to describe the ensuing silence was that it was thick enough to be cut by a knife. Futaba has yet to let go, but Akira recognizes the far-off look in her eyes, the same pinched expression when analyzing high-level shadows or mapping Mementos. She’s already gathered the evidence, and it’s now only a matter of putting the information together like an impossible puzzle. Akira knows the feeling well.

She’s never remembered looping before, didn’t even begin to suspect it unless Akira told her. His mind races, trying to pin what could have possibly changed.

If Futaba remembers the loop, does that mean everybody else has as well? Could it have been only because she was Oracle, enclosed within Prometheus during the fight and surrounded by a flood of information the rest of them could barely even fathom? Were all of the Phantom Thieves caught in the crossfire of Yaldabaoth’s personal grudge against Akira simply by being present at the time, or was it every single person with a strong connection to the Metaverse, dead or alive? Was this Lavenza’s doing? Why would she ever intervene like this? Why now?

Did it have something to do with Arsene not appearing?

Shockingly, Sojiro is the first person to recover. His eyes slowly slide from his daughter to Akira, suspicious of the strange boy who had seemingly done more for Futaba’s mental health within two seconds than anyone else had in years. “Who are you?” he asks, voice hard. “And how do you-?” he trails off, gesturing between Akira and Futaba haplessly.

“I’m Akira Kurusu, Sakura-san,” Akira introduces himself formally, attempting to still make a good first impression to his guardian despite the fact that Futaba was still clinging to him as if he’d disappear the moment she lets go. “You’re supposed to be my guardian during my probation?” Annoyingly, it sounds more like a question than the confident tone he’s trying to project. The familiar script has been absolutely thrown out the window, and he hasn’t felt this off-kilter in decades. Unlike Futaba, Sojiro obviously had no memories of the previous year. To him, today had been just another day in April.

“Oh,” Sojiro says faintly. “That’s right. They did tell me that some delinquent would be arriving today. But that still doesn’t explain-”

“We met online!” Futaba cuts in hurriedly, the lie awkward as it tumbles out of her. “In a chatroom! He said that he was coming to Tokyo and I managed to figure out that he would be staying with you and I just wanted to come greet him!”

“Yes,” Akira says, nodding placidly, happy to follow her weak excuse rather than attempt to sort his own thoughts enough to try to make his own. “We’re internet friends.”

Sojiro squeezes his eyes shut, brow furrowed in frustration. His throat bobs uncertainly, full of questions that Akira is definitely not prepared to answer, until he finally settles on: “You put your information online? What if he had been a goldfish? People are always lying on the internet!”

“Ugh, Sojiro! Do you mean catfish? Akira would never do that!”

“I would never do that,” he echoes. 

Sojiro scoffs. “That’s what they always say!” he scolds her, completely out of place from the rest of the situation. This conversation was doing nothing but wasting everyone’s time. Akira needed to get Futaba alone, swap stories so he could piece together as much information as he can. “Did he even tell you that he assaulted someone?”

“Sojiro, that doesn’t-”

“Um, Boss?” an elderly man interrupts, causing everyone to jump. Akira had completely forgotten that there had been actual customers present. “Is everything alright?”

Sojiro puts his head in his hands. His voice is muffled when he says, “Usagiyama-san, Leblanc is currently closed. Your meal is on the house. Please leave.”

Usagiyama swallows, uncomfortable by the multiple dirty looks shot his way, including one by his own wife. “Oh, alright. We’ll be on our way, then. I hope you resolve your family emergency.”

 _Family emergency_ , Akira mouths in disbelief as the old couple awkwardly shuffles past him. Usagiyama’s wife pauses to pat his shoulder. Smiling serenely at him and Futaba, she says, “I hope you friends have a wonderful time while you’re here, dear.”

The door slams open in Usagiyama’s face, the bell’s friendly chime a stark difference to the violent entrance. The couple stumbles out onto the street as a streak of bleached blond hair bolts inside. Ryuji slides to an unsteady stop, still clad in loose pajamas and wearing house shoes. His expression immediately clears in relief when he sees Akira and Futaba. “Dude!” he manages to say between heavy gasps, “you’re alright!”

He launches himself at Akira, dragging him into a suffocating hug. He fists the back of Akira’s blazer to tug him closer, and Futaba squawks indignantly, caught between the two. Ryuji slots his forehead against Akira’s shoulder, pointedly ignoring her protests as his hot breath fans on Akira’s neck. “Yaldy was going right for you last I saw! I thought you - I thought - shit, don’t scare me like that again!”

“Leblanc is closed! Get out!”

“Ryuji!” Futaba says. “Get off of me!” She jabs at his side and he yelps, flailing backwards. He trips over Akira’s forgotten suitcase and crashes into a booth seat in a heap of limbs.

“You know this one too? Futaba!”

“Chatroom?” Akira offers hesitantly.

Ryuji remembers too, then. That meant that it was only a matter of time before the others turned up, searching for the same answers that Akira himself desperately needs. 

“D’you know what happened?” Ryuji flops his head back onto the leather seat, still panting. “All I remember was seein’ that butterfly and then I was back at home. Where’s everybody else at?”

Akira zeroes in on him with a single-minded focus. “You saw Lavenza too?”

“Lavenza? You mean that little girl at the prison?”

“She looks like a butterfly, sometimes.”

_“Why?”_

“She’s immortal. Did she say anything to you?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for everybody else before talking about this?” asks Futaba.

“Ann and Makoto will be here soon,” Akira easily dismisses her. “The others can’t make it. Don’t worry, they’re all fine. Ryuji, what did you hear?”

“No! No, stop that!” They all turn to look at Sojiro, his arms crossed as he openly glares at them. Ryuji half raises a hand in a lazy greeting, but aborts the movement nervously when Sojiro rounds on him. “What the hell are you three talking about? Butterflies? Time loops?”

“We were all playing an online ARPG campaign and the enemy party was trying to defeat us in a 4v1 battle with an overpowered NPC final boss, and the way it kept hitting us with heavy debuffs using cheat codes in merciless mode to k-o our second-gen avatars by depleting their hp and sp before the time limit just really freaked him out?” Futaba interjects quickly. 

“Futaba, throwing a bunch of words you know I don’t understand doesn’t make it any less obvious that you are _lying_ to me.”

“Wait, what’s wrong with Boss? Does he not know about us anymore?” Ryuji asks.

_“Know what?”_

Futaba makes a wounded noise, thin fingers spasming where they’re curled into Akira’s uniform as he tries to figure out the most tactful way to pry her off of him. He needs a moment to back away and _think,_ to figure out what was happening away from the oppressive wall of people. Everything had been going so well the last loop, as carefully constructed as he’d manipulated it to be, so _where had he gone wrong?_ What game was Yaldabaoth playing this time?

Or maybe this was for the best? Would the rest of his teammates taking on some of his burden actually help him escape this year? Genuinely relying on people for help was a foreign concept that had yet to click in Akira’s mind. What could they possibly try that he hadn’t already?

Before he can think it through, Akira blurts out, “Boss, do you trust me?”

“I don’t even _know you,_ kid.”

Deep breaths. The rest of the team will be here soon, and he needs to reschedule any inevitable breakdown to a time that they will _not_ be here to witness it. Right now, that means wrestling back any semblance of control in this situation that he can. He’s the _leader_ of the Phantom Thieves. He can do this.

 _“Akira!_ Oh my god!”

Damn it.

“Ann,” he greets her softly, and then, “you’re okay.” Futaba, at least, seemingly learned her lesson after Ryuji, and manages to jump back before Ann can engulf her in her arms as collateral. Akira is barely able to avoid a mouthful of blonde hair himself as Ann readily takes her place. Her forehead bumps painfully against his chin in her eagerness, but he lets her hold onto him, grounding herself. When she finally steps away, Futaba doesn’t miss her chance to dart closer, carefully snagging Akira’s wrist in both of her clammy hands. He flexes his free hand before curling it into a loose fist, index finger rubbing against his thumb anxiously.

“I’m sorry,” Ann says, wiping at her eyes with her arm. He doesn’t miss the fact that it only serves to further smear her makeup, as if she’d already been crying. “I don’t know what happened. I was with you guys and then I just _wasn’t._ I just woke up talking to Shiho, at the underground mall, like nothing had even happened, but she wasn’t wearing her casts and just looked _fine,_ like before everything with Kamoshida, you know? I don’t - Joker, what’s going on?”

“So it happened to you too, huh?” Ryuji this time, his voice carefully pitched to be more gentle. He was callous at the best of times, but Akira was grateful that he was taking at least _some_ sort of initiative, at least until everybody got their bearings back. Ryuji and Ann bickered often, but she hadn’t looked this shattered since the aftermath of Shiho’s suicide attempt.

Ann blinks, coming back to herself. “ _Ryuji,"_ she breathes, “ _Futaba-chan_. You’re both okay, too.” She swivels her head, as if expecting the rest of the Thieves to jump out from behind the chairs. “Did everyone else make it?”

“Everybody’s okay,” Akira tells her, mind buzzing. They’re terrified and confused, most likely, but safe. Ann had called him Joker. “Makoto’s coming by soon. We can talk to Yusuke, Haru, and Morgana later. I doubt we’ll see them today.”

Ryuji perks up. “Have they said anything to you?” His words easily overlap with Ann’s demanding, “How do you know that?”

“Makoto’s the only one left who’s free, so it’s not exactly a difficult-”

The final chime is not nearly as chaotic as the ones preceding, Makoto’s sharp intake of breath quiet and tense against the faint bustle of the street. Her ballet flats clatter against the tiles as she rushes forward, and for the fourth time in ten minutes, Akira passively lets himself be held. His own comfort be damned, right now, his teammates need him. His emotions are for later, later, _later._

“I thought we’d failed,” Makoto says, voice hitching as she tucks herself against his chest. “I thought _I_ failed.”

Akira brings an arm around her in a gentle hug, squeezing once before letting go. To all of them, he says, authoritative and trust-worthy, “We’re all okay. We survived, and that’s what matters. Right now, we just need to focus on our next move and figure out what happened.”

Makoto steps away from him and he lets go easily. “Right,” she says, and everyone politely ignores the slight tremor as she speaks. “I think we’ve somehow time traveled to before the school year began. I was at Shujin, and I ran Kobayakawa. He wasn’t - he wasn’t _dead,_ and seemed confused when I, um,” she blushes, embarrassed, “ _screamed._ He asked me about how I was preparing for the new year and student council.”

“I was with Shiho,” Ann adds. “I don’t think anything had happened to her yet, with Kamoshida. And then I checked my phone, and he had just,” she swallows, uncomfortable, “he had just texted me. He hasn’t done that since April.”

“It _is_ April,” Futaba says, “again.”

“So nothing’s happened yet?” Ryuji asks. “No Phantom Thieves? I just - what happened? _Why?_ ”

Why indeed.

Akira turns to Sojiro, whose lips are pursed. “ _Please._ I can prove everything later, I promise, but right now we,” he gestures towards his friends, “need to talk. _Alone._ ”

Futaba speaks up. “Yeah! I can help, but can you just,” she makes a shooing motion in his direction, “go away!”

Sojiro stares her down. She hadn’t been this energetic since Wakaba’s death, and Akira subtly leans closer, bumping his arm against hers. He doesn’t dare speak up again, hoping that Sojiro just gets the message: _Futaba trusts us, can't you do the same?_

“Fine,” he grunts. “You can use the attic. It needs to be cleaned up anyway for this guy.”

Akira says, “Thank you, Boss. Everyone, _come on._ ” He jerks his head towards the stairs. 

“But your room’s a mess,” Futaba whines bluntly, even as she follows him.

“So is yours,” Akira counters, “and I cleaned it up for you, didn’t I? Repay the favor.”

Ryuji groans from behind him. “Dude, _what?_ ”

“You want to figure out what happened, right?”

The rest of them exchange glances, and Akira waits for them at the base of the stairs, more impatient than he allows himself to show. “Yes,” Makoto eventually speaks for them all. “Let’s do this.”

Akira turns away from them, leading them upwards. It didn’t matter now who orchestrated this loop, or what they possibly hoped to gain from it. Right now, Akira only had one goal, and that was to finally _escape._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should mention that I'm not planning for there to be any ships in this fic! There may be some background relationships, but anything involving Akira will only really be vaguely hinted at, because he has throughout the years definitely dated almost everyone on the team (and then some) and does, in fact, still vaguely remember those feelings, even if they haven't fully translated into the current timeline.


	3. Chapter 3

Akira is used to the attic being nothing more than a glorified storage unit before he spends arduous hours transforming it into a somewhat livable space. Through the eyes of his friends, however, he can feel the new-found disgust of the clutter that covers the dirtied floor and the stale, dusty air. Makoto coughs delicately as Ryuji lets out a low whistle.

“Boss really didn’t leave you much, did he?” Ryuji asks, eyeing the thick layer of dust that blankets the desk. He slowly carves a stripe through it with his finger, nose wrinkling when his fingertip turns black in return. 

Akira points at Sojiro’s excuse for a bed. “He gave me a mattress. Anyway,” he shakes his head, “you all wanted answers.”

His teammates snap to attention, gazes ripped away from the unfamiliar grime of the attic to give him their single-minded focus. _Like soldiers going to war,_ his mind supplies unhelpfully, before he immediately dismisses the thought. Not now.

Futaba starts hesitantly, “You said we were stuck in a time loop.”

Ryuji blurts out, “ _For real?_ ” as Ann pulls at the ends of her pigtails, distraught. “What happened to Yaldy, then?”

“Is he getting ready to attack us again? Did he do this?” Ann asks.

“No,” Akira says firmly. Focus on what he does know, for now. “Even if he does remember, he’s not strong enough for a full fledged attack, like before. There’s not enough energy from the public in Mementos. We don’t exist yet, right?”

“That’s so weird to think about!” she exclaims. “This doesn’t make any sense!”

Makoto wraps her arms around herself, frowning in thought. “Yaldabaoth was still powerful without Mementos, though, and when he erased everybody’s memories. He shouldn’t _need_ us to attack the entire world, so why wait?”

“He didn’t have the proper motivation without us,” Akira argues. “He was perfectly fine to let the world be before we came along.”

“But how do you know that he doesn’t remember? We all do! It makes sense that he’d try to get us now when we’re disjointed like this. I think we should find the others and return to the Metaverse as soon as possible.”

Before Akira can reply, Ryuji says, “Dude, how are you being so _calm_ about all of this?” 

“That’s another thing,” Makoto adds. “How are you so _sure_ about everything? You told Futaba that we were in a time loop, not that we’d just time traveled,” a pause, her eyes widening, “like you’ve done all of this before.”

Akira swallows, blunt nails digging crescents into his palms. When Makoto’s sharp gaze flicks downwards at the movement, he deliberately unclenches his fists, hands hanging loosely at his sides. He can count on one hand the amount of times he’s done this before, spilled his secrets to his friends in a chaotic mess, bare and transparent and awaiting their fatal judgement like Caroline and Justine poised over the executioner’s blade.

This time has been different. This time _will_ be different.

“You’re right,” he admits. “I have. I’ve done this before. _All_ of this before. I’ve been living this same year for decades, now.”

For a moment, no one moves. The four future Phantom Thieves stand in their rough semicircle around Akira, a hasty council crammed into the liminal spaces of the dirty attic. Their silence is surreal, pervasive in the thick air. Akira waits for them.

In a single moment, the quiet cracks, as sudden and jarring as a gunshot. Futaba makes a distressed noise at the back of her throat as Ryuji roughly scruffs at his bleached hair, a curse torn from his throat. Ann’s hands move to cover her mouth, but Akira can still hear the sounds of his name muffled behind her palms. Makoto’s hands squeeze her elbows harshly, fingers bunching the dark fabric of her uniform as if it will transform into the steel edges of Queen’s distinct armor if she grips hard enough.

“Okay,” Makoto’s voice is flat, a desperate attempt at calmness. “ _Okay,_ you’re stuck in a time loop. We knew that; _I_ knew that. It’s April again, for all of us now. We just n-need to compare what we know.”

Ann opens her mouth to speak, but Ryuji beats her to it. “ _Screw that,_ Akira, why the hell didn’t you tell us before? We could have done something before now!”

The sudden anger from Ryuji is a whiplash change, and for a moment, it completely throws Akira off. “What, would you have actually _believed_ me?” 

His tone is venomous, and Ryuji flinches back before saying, “Yes, obviously! We’re your _friends!_ You could have trusted us!”

“Ryuji!” Ann hisses.

Akira takes half a step forward, and Ryuji tilts his chin. Akira spits, “Oh, really? Based on _past experiences,_ that’s not always the case!”

“Our other selves may have been assholes, then, but _we_ would have been better! You know that!”

“Did I? It’s not like you’re _the same people_ or anything!”

“Dude, _come on-”_

“Stop it!” Futaba yells, panicked enough to make them both halt unevenly in their tracks. “Stop it, now!”

With their full attention turned on her, she immediately clamps up, face flaming red. Makoto swoops in to rescue her. “Futaba’s right,” she declares, eyes hard. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. What’s done is _done,_ there’s no use arguing about it _._ All that matters is what we do next.”

Ryuji glowers at Akira’s cluttered shelf, stuffed with forgotten books rather than a treasured collection of gifts. “Right.”

“ _Right,_ ” Akira echoes frostily, and adjusts his glasses. Their reactions were predictable, at least. Akira was struggling to grasp on to anything that was in this new, twisted timeline.

After a beat of awkward silence, Akira runs a hand through his hair, closing his eyes. _Calm down: this isn’t how to start this loop._ “You’re right,” he concedes to Makoto. “We need to get in contact with everybody. Futaba, could you set up the group chat again? Yusuke and Haru have probably figured out what’s going on by now, but they’ll want to hear from us. We can meet up with them in person tomorrow, but there’s no way we’ll be able to see them again right now. It’s impossible for them to get out of their places.”

Even as Futaba whips out her phone and begins to rapidly type, Ann frowns. “Will they be okay? Madarame and Okumura haven’t had their hearts changed yet, right?”

Futaba looks up wildly. “Wait. I have, though. I _know_ I have.”

Akira nods. “Right. It’s still April.” He hesitates. “Futaba, you _were_ the treasure of your Palace. That’s why you’re still fine, I think. We had to steal everybody else's.” Futaba relaxes and turns her attention back to her phone.

Ryuji finally speaks, voice still tight but noticeably less enraged. “What about Mona-mona, then? He’s still stuck with Kamoshida. We need to bust him out!”

Makoto asks, “What? Morgana’s with Kamoshida?”

“Didn’t we tell y’all? We rescued him from a prison cell.”

“ _I_ rescued him,” Akira can’t help but add, light-hearted teasing a desperate attempt to cure the sour mood between him and Ryuji. “ _You_ wanted to leave him behind.” 

“Yeah yeah, _whatever._ Point is, the stupid cat’s still stuck. You really asking us to just leave him there?”

The thing is, whenever Akira goes to Kamoshida’s Palace, Morgana has always just been _there,_ waiting for him with no memories beyond being tossed in a cold cell. It never mattered when Akira rescued him. It was forever the same, whether Akira came within hours or months of the reset. Even in this weird timeline, Akira knows that Morgana will still be right where they first found him. He’s the embodiment of humanity’s hope, after all. The passage of time has little meaning to him.

He was positive that they could go rescue him whenever they wanted, but explaining how he knew that would make them question how exactly he was so certain in the first place. Admitting that he once left a teammate to waste away alone and let Kamoshida run rampant for months before bothering to do anything about it? There was no way that _that_ would go over well.

“He’ll be fine if we wait,” Akira says, authoritative. When Ryuji opens his mouth to argue, Akira adds, “Remember, we only found him on the first day of school. He may not even be in the Palace yet. We should check tomorrow, though. We’ll have gathered everyone else by then.”

“I don’t like the idea of just _leaving_ him there,” Ann gripes. “Who knows what he’ll do when he wakes up alone!”

“Leaving him confused for a day is better than barging in with no plan,” Akira points out. “Anyway, even _if_ we’re wrong, he’ll just find his way back here like you all did.”

Ryuji crosses his arms. “He was _trapped,_ remember? He can’t get out without us.”

“Kamoshida never actually hurt Morgana before we got there! If anything, he’s _safe._ ”

Futaba pipes up, “I made the group chat!”

Simultaneously, all of the phones in the room beep. Akira and Ryuji continue to glare at each other for a few tense heartbeats. Akira is the first to look away, fishing out his phone from his pocket to see a gif of Futaba’s familiar grinning cat. Instantly, a slew of messages begin to appear.

> **HARU** : Everyone!
> 
> **HARU** : What happened???
> 
> **HARU** : Is everybody okay???

Akira’s phone vibrates in his hand, the group chat disappearing as Haru’s icon blinks up at him, an incoming call. Akira puts his phone on speaker and sets it face-up on the table. Haru’s high-pitched voice filters out, words tumbling uncharacteristically. “Akira-kun!” 

He can’t help the small sigh of relief. Mentally, he ticks her name off of his list, a concrete confirmation that another member of his team is _safe._ If nothing else, he’s still their leader, and arguments aside, right now they need that more than ever.

“Haru,” he says, his voice briefly overlapping with the others and their various expressions of excitement and worry. “You’re okay.” It’s not a question.

“Yes!” she exclaims. There’s a frantic rustling in the background, followed by the distinct sound of the slamming of a door. “Yes! Oh, are all of you together?”

“We’re currently at Leblanc,” Makoto confirms. “Everyone’s here except you, Yusuke, and Morgana.”

“Did something happen to them?”

“They’re fine,” Akira cuts in. “None of you were able to make it here. They’re safe, I promise.” He ignores Makoto’s sharp glance. “It’s April again.” He cuts to the chase. “Yaldabaoth put us in a time loop.”

A drawn out silence, before Haru says in a clipped voice, “Yes, I noticed. I just saw my father. He was - he was _alright._ He was _alive._ ”

Ann’s mouth opens wordlessly, and Makoto whispers, “Oh, _Haru._ ” 

Haru takes a fortifying breath. “I’m alright,” she says even as her tone wavers. “I’m just glad everyone’s safe. Should I come in person?”

“No, you don’t have to,” Akira hurriedly says before anyone else in the room could shout an affirmation. He doesn’t think he can handle another person hugging him today. “Just stay on the phone with us, okay? We’re planning on meeting up again tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Where?”

“Shujin,” Akira says, and this time it’s directed at all of them. “Morgana’s currently still in Kamoshida’s Palace. We’ll meet up at the front gate at nine am. There won’t be many people there, and no one knows about the Phantom Thieves anyway. Ryuji and I will sneak in and rescue Morgana. We can all talk after.”

“Wait-” Ryuji says, but he’s cut off by Ann’s, “Excuse me?”

Makoto looks at him incredulously. “Do we get any say in this?”

“No,” Akira says. This isn’t really the time for tact. That’s for later, when all of them are together again. One step at a time. “Ryuji and I know the path down to the dungeons, and we’ll attract too much attention if we enter as a large group.”

“You’re just going to leave us behind then?” Futaba asks. “ _Again?_ ”

“It took us four hours to escape Kamoshida’s Palace last time. It shouldn’t take nearly as long now. You’ll be fine.” Akira tilts his head. “Besides, a lot of the shadows in the Palace are weak to electric attacks. It’ll be a good test run to see how your Personas have reacted to the loop.”

“Wouldn’t you know?” Ryuji asks, petulant. 

“I know how _I_ react,” Akira says. He purses his lips before adding, “Usually, I transform immediately. I have to actively concentrate not to.”

“Why wait?”

“I didn’t want _you_ to know that I was a Persona user right from the start.”

“Wouldn’t it have been better if he knew?” Ann asks. “You guys told me that you nearly _died_ because you got captured!”

“There would have been too many questions. You needed to see the proof for yourself. You needed to see me unlock my Persona! If you don’t, the loop kind of gets _ruined._ ”

“So you just faked it in the cell? Dude, _what?_ If you’d waited any longer Kamoshida would have _killed_ me!” Ryuji’s voice rises dangerously as he speaks.

“I wouldn’t have let you get _murdered_ , Ryuji! Who do you think I am?”

“What are you talking about?” Haru’s tinny voice interrupts them, and Akira blinks down at his phone. For a moment, he’d forgotten she was even listening, unaware of what had already been forcibly revealed to the rest. “‘The first loop?’”

Futaba blurts out, “Akira’s apparently been living this year since _forever_ and only bothered to tell us a few minutes ago!”

“ _What?_ ”

“See, that’s what _we_ said!” Ryuji exclaims. “And this guy just sort of _brushed it off!_ ”

“I’m sorry, alright! I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we have more important things to worry about!” Akira says, exasperated.

“Stop arguing, both of you! It’s a good plan. We need to get everybody together,” Makoto snaps at them. “Then we can figure out what went wrong with Yaldabaoth.” She turns to Akira. “That’s why you keep resetting, isn’t it? Because we’ve never been able to defeat him?” When he nods wordlessly, she continues. “We _all_ have a second chance here and we can’t waste that, but first, we all need to get on the same page.”

“It’s a long story, and this - this is the first time you’ve all looped with me.” Akira takes a deep breath and rubs at the back of his neck absent-mindedly. “Can we start with what you guys remember? We’ll go from there.”

“What about Inari?” Futaba asks. “He hasn’t replied yet. Shouldn’t we wait for him? We’ll just have to go over everything again anyway.”

Akira feels a trickle of unease at her words, a reminder that one of their teammates was still left unaccounted for, but Makoto saves him from answering. “We should still talk, Futaba.” She points out, “It’ll be better if we can fill him in on everything at once instead of just waiting around.”

“Oh, yeah.” Futaba glances down at her phone, tapping forlornly at the screen. She picks her way across the room to crouch on Akira’s musty bed and wraps her arms around her knees. “Yeah. Let’s - let’s talk then.”

Ann is the first to speak. “Mementos had just merged with Shibuya. We went to a,” she hesitates, “some sort of prison? It was blue.”

“The Velvet Room,” Akira supplies her.

“Yeah, that! Then we fought Yaldabaoth.”

“And then we lost,” Ryuji says, face twisting in a grimace. “We fought him and _we lost._ ”

“Yeah, we did,” Akira agrees. Quieter, “We always do.”

“Oh, Akira,” Haru says, voice lilting downwards in sorrow. “He was talking to you at the end, wasn’t he? He mentioned that you’d already failed. I didn’t understand it, at the time.”

“I thought he was just,” Futaba makes a spiraling movement near her temple with her finger, “villain monologuing. Trying to make fun of us, or whatever.”

Makoto puts her hand on her chin. “I saw a blue butterfly, like the one in Lavenza’s hair. She was apologizing to you, Akira, and spoke about how she made some mistake. She called you her Trickster.”

“Said something about how you’re human?” Ryuji adds. “And then everything disappeared and I just,” he makes a sweeping gesture with his arms, “woke up in my bedroom and ran here. Didn’t even stop until I saw you.”

“I was wondering why you were in pajamas, actually,” Ann muses.

“I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up,” says Makoto, one eyebrow raised. “It’s past noon, you know.”

“Shuddup,” Ryuji grumbles. “Fine, Akira, your turn.”

Akira mentally backtracks. “So you all remember that, then?” When they all make various noises of affirmation, he continues, “That’s never happened before, so I don’t know what changed. Lavenza’s never restarted it herself or anything like that.”

“Wait, then how d’you usually end a loop? She seemed pretty damn confident in herself.”

_Here goes nothing._

“I die.” For such a simple sentence, the following silence is oppressive, weighing down on Akira. He feels the childish urge to raise his shoulders to his ears, but pushes away the meager attempt at hiding from their horrified eyes as they gape openly at him. Death is very real and very _permanent_ for everyone but him. 

“You _what?_ ” Ryuji shouts, jolting from his position. “You frickin’ _die?_ ”

“You mean, like, from a Mudoon?” Futaba asks, voice small but eyes wide.

They all know it’s not from a Mudoon. Akira shakes his head, and then, for Haru’s sake, clarifies, “No. Never from something I can be revived from. Spells don’t really do it. Usually, when something happens it’s like,” he loudly snaps his fingers and doesn’t miss the room’s collective flinch, “and then I’m back on the train and it’s April 9th, 2016.”

“And how many times has this happened, do you think?” Makoto asks hesitantly, speaking over the strangled noise Futaba makes in response.

Akira shrugs, uncomfortable. “I lost count, after a while. At least twenty times by now, maybe.”

“ _Jesus,_ dude. Why didn’t you tell us?” Ryuji asks again, tone considerably more worried than hostile.

Akira responds in kind. “I didn’t want to freak you guys out.”

“Consider us suitably freaked out, then,” Ann mutters, her large blue eyes pinning Akira down and trapping him under the heavy weight of their expectations. 

“Oh, _Akira,_ ” Haru says, her high voice pitching in distress. “Are you okay? You’ve had to go through all of this _alone._ ”

“I would have said something _eventually,_ ” Akira weakly defends himself from their concern. They hardly look convinced, so he amends, “After I escaped.”

“After we defeated Yaldabaoth, you mean,” Makoto says, brows furrowed.

“Yeah.”

“Something that you just said we’ve never done before.”

“I mean,” Akira starts haltingly, “if it makes you feel any better, we got close, this time. Really, _really_ close. Closer than I have in a while.”

“But not close enough, apparently,” Makoto counters.

“Dude, you _died,_ ” Ryuji repeats disbelievingly. “Stop acting like you’re all okay about it! We messed it up.” His eyes skip away from Akira’s, and he scowls at the floor. “Yaldy’s been pullin’ your strings for _years_ and none of us ever noticed or did anything.” He grinds his teeth. “Some Phantom Thieves we are, huh.”

The ensuing silence is scarily empty. Futaba curls further into herself, and none of the Thieves can bring themselves to meet his eyes. Seeing his teammates shut down like this, lost in their own thoughts, isn’t quite the worst way they could have taken the revelation. It still hurts.

Ann is the one to finally break the brooding quiet, and when she does, there is Hecate’s blazing fire in her tone. “So, what, are we all giving up, then?” she asks them all, gritting her teeth as everyone’s gazes snap to her. She jabs a finger at Akira and then gestures to the rest of the room. “Akira, you’ve been alone this whole time, but you’re _not_ anymore! We’re going to do everything right this time around! We’re going to fix every mistake and do things better.” 

“Ann, I’ve tried everything I can think of-”

“You haven’t tried it with us!” she cuts him off. “This time, we are going to help you, and we’re going to defeat Yaldabaoth, and you’re finally going to be _free!_ ”

“Ann’s right,” Makoto says. She straightens her shoulders, determined. Akira can almost see the shadow of Anat’s metal mask on her face. “No more doing your own thing. We’re in this together, now.”

“Yeah, man,” Ryuji says, shifting his stance. His eyes are narrowed, fists clenching. From the edges of his vision, Akira can faintly see the swirls of Seiten Taisei’s dark storm clouds brush at Ryuji’s feet. “Screw Yaldabaoth and his shitty games!”

“If anybody can defeat a god, it’s us!” Futaba exclaims. She raises one arm in the arm unsteadily, ignorant of the faint flare of Prometheus’ red aura that accompanies the movement.

“I agree! This time, we can save everybody!” Haru’s voice is resolute on the other side of the call, stubborn as Astarte’s colorful skull.

Akira stares at them all, at a total loss for words. Their optimism is overwhelming, their complete loyalty and trust in him brimming in a way he doesn’t quite know how to deal with. Their belief is infectious. For the first time, Akira doesn’t need to face down his impossible challenge alone. Right now, they wouldn’t allow him to, anyway.

“Okay,” he finally says, breathing deeply in relief. “Let’s all do this, then.”

He allows a small smile, mirroring his teammates, before his thoughts ground to a shuddering halt. Slowly, everyone’s grins slide off of their faces at his growing expression of horror. Shit, he doesn’t know how he forgot about it for a single goddamn second.

“We can’t access the Metaverse,” his voice sounds far away to his own ears, the massive hole in their plan threatening to swallow him up. His ears ringing, he can’t help but to desperately repeat himself. “Guys, _we can’t access the Metaverse!_ ”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Ann’s voice is shrill. “What do you mean we can’t access the Metaverse?”

“I mean the MetaNav isn’t on my phone!” Panic is rising in Akira’s throat, indifferent to his effort to clamp it down. All of his new found hopes for this loop dash away, disappearing like smoke. It doesn’t matter if all of them remember if none of them can actually do anything to stop Yaldabaoth! 

This loop was just another unique nightmare after all, underneath its pretty guise as a well-deserved blessing. Akira honestly doesn’t know why he even bothered to think otherwise.

As one, all of the Phantom Thieves manage to wrestle their phones out of their pockets, frantically turning them on in a race to check their apps. Futaba gets there first, and announces it with a lilting confusion. “Uh, no,” she says. “It’s literally right here. Look.” She turns her phone around for Akira to verify it. The pure red background and simple black search bar is stark and familiar and undeniably _there._

“Me too!” Ann says, followed by a confirming grunt by Ryuji. “Check again, Akira.” Her fingers fly over the keyboard, and a smooth “CANDIDATE FOUND” rings out from her phone. “See, I just searched Kamoshida and he's still on it and everything. It’s fine.”

Akira reaches for his own phone, pulse roaring in his ears as he minimizes Haru’s call in order to access his home page. He scrolls through his phone as Makoto steps closer to hover over his shoulder. He checks through it twice, clicking through every page hectically. 

“It’s gone,” Makoto affirms gravely, as if he hadn’t already noticed that himself. “Why don’t you have it? You were the first one of us to get it, right?”

Akira growls. It’s another unfamiliarity, a non-constant factor to further complicate this chaotic loop. “I don’t know,” he grits out.

Ryuji frowns. “It’ll still be okay though, won’t it?” he asks. “We can just pull you in with our Navs, and the app will just automatically download.”

Futaba nods. “Theoretically, yes. This can’t be a big deal. As long as he still has access to his Personas once he enters a Palace, it shouldn’t matter.”

“This is just a hiccup, then?” Haru says from Akira’s phone, and he tiredly brings her call back to full screen, exiting from the rest of his now seemingly terrifyingly empty phone. 

Some hiccup.

“Yeah,” Akira answers, unable to help the creeping exhaustion in his tone. Ryuji reaches over to pat at his back good-naturedly, and Akira barely resists the urge to shrug off his hand. Everything’s still fine. This obstacle is nothing compared to the other stuff he’s gone through.

Nothing involving the Metaverse is ever truly _nothing,_ is it?

Makoto shakes her head, stepping around Akira and into the middle of the room. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about Akira’s MetaNav right now. We have a plan set for tomorrow. Everybody remember where we’re meeting up?” At their nods, Makoto folds her hands neatly and turns on her heel to face him. Akira has decades of seniority over her, yet is embarrassingly unable to stop himself from shrinking back under her withering look. “Right now, we have more important things to do.”

“Uh, what?” Ryuji asks.

A dramatic pause, and then, with all of the poise and leadership of a Student Council President, Makoto says, “We’re cleaning Akira’s room. I can barely even _think_ in here. Or breathe.”

“Wait, _seriously?_ ” Ryuji gapes at them. “Shit, I thought you were joking downstairs!”

Akira shakes his head solemnly, grateful to follow Makoto’s all-too-obvious pivot away from their previous topic. “I’ve never joked about anything, ever, in my life.”

Futaba points at him accusingly, face scrunched up. “Lies!” she cries out, and Ann makes an enthusiastic noise of agreement.

“I’m still in pajamas?” Ryuji tries to escape half-heartedly.

“And whose fault is that, exactly?” Ann teases, eager to return to the normalcy of ribbing. “You deserve to be forced to clean someone’s room after running across Tokyo in _house slippers._ ”

“She’s right,” says Akira. He points to the cluster of junk. “There’s a broom behind the bike. That’s a good start, anyway.”

“Dude, since when have you ever had a _bike?_ ”

“Oh, we’re just cleaning now?” Futaba’s nose wrinkles as she observes the others. “Actually, you know what? I’m gonna take a nap instead.” She tips directly sideways on her perch, ignoring the large plume of dust that releases into the air when she lands on the dirty mattress. “I’m tired,” she explains to everyone’s stunned expressions. “Goodnight.”

She closes her eyes, breath evening out. “Oh!” Makoto says as she stares at Futaba, already fast asleep. “That was quick.”

Ann ignores them both. “Akira, where’s the feather duster? I’m going to die if I have to look at these spiderwebs anymore.”

“Top shelf, to the right and at the back.”

“Listen,” Haru says, safely physically removed from the abrupt - if not completely necessary - change in tone and activity, “I’m so glad all of you are okay! I was so worried after we got back, but is it alright if I go now? I want to spend some time with my father, now that I have the chance.”

Akira relaxes. “Yeah, of course. See you tomorrow morning, then?”

“I can’t wait to see you all, Akira-kun. Goodbye, everyone!” She quickly hangs up after everyone echoes the sentiment. Akira sets his phone down, careful to avoid the urge to scroll to where the MetaNav should be. He’ll have plenty of time to obsess over that later. Right now, he needs to focus on this, something calm and domestic, anything to soften the unforgiving blow of information he’d been forced to inflict on his teammates earlier. 

He’s always had to clean his room right about now anyway. It’ll be nice to do it alongside friends, for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I rewrote this chapter multiple times before I was even close to being happy with it, and it ended up much longer than originally anticipated. On the bright side, I'm now almost finished with chapters 4 and 5, so those waits should hopefully not be nearly as long. 
> 
> I'm so grateful that so many people are enjoying this fic already! I'm super excited to see this one through (even if the update schedule will be unpredictable at best, lmao).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A couple of Phantom Thieves hang out with their father figure! :)

It’s only hours later, after the sun has already begun to sink under the horizon, that the Thieves decide to take their leave from Leblanc. They’re loath to abandon each other after the chaos of their fight with Yaldabaoth and the immediate confusion of the loop, but Ryuji and Makoto are finally forced to return to their waiting families to field off questions about their frenzied, unexplained flights from their homes. Akira reminds them of the plan before they go, as well as caution them about the train crashing tomorrow afternoon. There’s a mental shutdown scheduled for the subway operator, after all. 

Well, there should be, at least. Whether or not it will actually happen this time around is a mystery that Akira itches to solve.

Left alone, he and Ann sit next to each other in amiable silence, quietly arranging the space on his bookshelves into something manageable. Eventually, Ann sits back, dusting off her hands with a tired groan. Akira can’t quite bring himself to relax, but he stops when he sees her rub her eyes. “You ready to leave?” he asks her. “The train lines will be closing soon.” He doesn’t bother to lower his voice for the sleeping Futaba’s sake - Akira knows that once she’s out, she won’t rise until she’s forced to. 

Instead of answering, Ann hunches in on herself and side-eyes Akira. “Your room isn’t finished yet,” she states, and he hums noncommittally. It’s more done than he’s ever able to finish on his own, anyway. At his non-answer, she continues, “You could stay at my place, tonight, if you want.”

At this Akira turns to face her fully, eyebrows raised. He hadn’t - they hadn’t _dated_ last time, had they? He had planned the last loop down to the finest detail, from the order of his daily errands to the exact words he’d spoken to the people around him. There was no way that Ann saw him romantically, was there? Unless they had been together, and Akira had just forgotten _,_ _again._ Could he have missed such a major development? More than ever, he wishes that his journals crossed the timeline with him. “What?”

Ann flushes, cheeks burning bright red. “Not like that!” she exclaims. “I just -” she huffs, and then says, quieter, “I just really don’t want to be alone right now, you know?”

Akira’s eyes soften, and he scoots closer to her. “I’m sorry, Ann,” he says, and her face falls, “but I promised to talk to Boss about all of this.”

“Oh!” she says, hugging her knees to her chest. “He seemed really upset earlier. D’you need any help convincing him?”

Akira huffs a laugh. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve managed to convince him about looping before. I have practice, you know.” He’s never had practice telling a Sojiro who was still a complete stranger to him, but practice nonetheless. That had to count for something, right?

“You’ve already told him about the time loops?”

“This isn’t your first time finding out either,” Akira reminds her gently. “I’ve gone through all this before.”

“But this time will be your last!” Ann says confidently, a determined set to her jaw.

Akira smiles at her, but it’s empty. “Yeah, of course,” he says. There are too many unknown variables, everything on the verge of spinning out of control, but-

Ann rubs at her arms and straightens her legs, preparing to stand. Akira beats her to it and reaches out a hand to help her to her feet. He lets go of her the moment she is fully upright, skin still crawling from the sheer amount of physical contact he’d been forced to endure over the course of the day. “I’ll walk you out,” he tells her. Akira can’t help but take a moment to check his phone again as she walks ahead of him, fingers tingling uncomfortably as it displays no new notifications. Multiple texts and missed calls later, Yusuke _still_ hasn’t responded. With a sigh, he sets his phone down and joins Ann at the top of the stairs.

Futaba is still curled up on his unmade bed, dead to the world, and Akira leaves her be as he and Ann make their way downstairs. He immediately freezes upon seeing Sojiro at the doorway, pinning Akira in an angry hawk’s stare. Next to him, Ann whispers a final _“good luck”_ and flees the cafe. Sojiro’s eyes snap to the door as the bell chimes, locking it behind her and trapping him and Akira inside. Mouth dry, Akira forces himself to relax and leans against a booth seat. He’s faced much more terrifying threats than a disapproving _Sojiro._

“I let you have your alone time with your friends, then. Heard some of their yelling, too. Now it’s my turn.” Sojiro starts their imitation of an interrogation with, “Where’s Futaba?”

Akira tilts his head towards the stairs. “Asleep. She’s like a battery. If she spends too much energy at once, she has to recharge.” A pause. “Futaba slept for nearly a month after the first time we met.”

Sojiro’s lips purse, displeased that Akira knew that information, maybe. “Sounds like you were a bad influence, then.”

“No, she reached out to us. She wanted us to change her heart.”

“Change her what?”

“This is going to be hard to believe.”

“Try me.”

“It has to do with Wakaba Isshiki’s research into cognitive psience.” 

Sojiro startles. “Who told you about Wakaba? Futaba?”

Akira drums his fingers on the smooth leather back of the booth in a haphazard beat. “You did. She was doing top secret research into cognitive psience. Her work was dangerous to the government, so Masayoshi Shido arranged for her to be murdered. It was staged as a suicide, and the blame was put on Futaba.” Sojiro gapes, and Akira goes in for the kill. “A few weeks before she died, she told you that she thought she was going to die soon. You thought she was joking and now it’s your biggest regret. That’s why you took in Futaba from her uncle.”

Sojiro shakes his head and backs away from Akira. “You’re lying,” he hisses. “Shido was always a cunning son of a bitch, but there was no way Wakaba was _killed!_ ”

“Wakaba loved Futaba too much to kill herself,” Akira says. He takes a step forward, closing the distance between them. “You always knew that, didn’t you?”

“Where are you even getting this information? Did you hack into the government databases or something? Brat, if you’re dragging Futaba into something illegal, I’m kicking you out!”

Akira physically recoils at that. “I thought you trusted me.”

“Trust you? Kid, you’ve been asking me to do that all damn day, but you’ve given absolutely nothing to show for it except for some half-baked excuses. Futaba may have told you. How do I know you’re not just trying to trick her?”

“I would _never_ do that! To her, _or_ to you! She’s like a sister to me, and you’re like-!” Akira cuts himself off, running his hands through his hair in agitation. He was getting too worked up, the day’s emotional whiplashes catching up to him like an uncontrollable tidal wave, threatening to do something dangerous, like make him _cry._ What could he possibly even say to salvage this outburst?

Finally, “You taught me how to make your curry.”

Sojiro blinks at that, thrown. “What?”

“It was your recipe, originally, but then Wakaba upgraded it.” He nods towards the leftover ingredients on the counter, untouched after Sojiro’s premature closure of Leblanc. “I can show you?”

It’s a gamble, but Akira has the recipe _memorized,_ and spent nearly twenty years perfecting it. Logically, there was no one else that Sojiro would have taught his recipe to: he’d never taken in employees, and even if he had, would be reluctant to show it to a complete stranger. Whether or not Sojiro accepts his offering is another story altogether.

Predictably, Sojiro’s reaction is to cross his arms, head tilted downwards as he glares. His gaze slides to the ingredients before skipping back to meet Akira’s. After a tense standoff, Sojiro says, “I’m not giving you a recipe.”

Bingo. With a cockier tone than he’d intended, Akira says, “I don’t need one.”

Sojiro’s eyebrows quirk as Akira sweeps behind the counter, grabbing an apron to fasten over his Shujin uniform as he goes. “Pretty confident then, aren’t you?” Sojiro asks as he joins Akira, choosing to slouch against the coffee beans to grant himself a direct view of Akira’s hands.

Akira smirks, snatching various ingredients from their shelves rather than meeting Sojiro’s judging eyes. “Dangerously so,” he quips.

As he pulls out the weathered cutting board and gets to work on the vegetables, Sojiro finally asks, noticeably calmer, “So, how did you know all of that? Futaba would have never told you any of the stuff you just said.”

“Futaba said it, at the beginning.” Akira takes a deep, fortifying breath. “I’m stuck in a time loop. I have been for a while now.”

Sojiro is silent, digesting the information. Finally, “Let’s say I believe you, then. How long is a while?”

Akira swallows. “It got hard to keep track, after the first few loops. There’s not exactly a way for me to keep note when everything resets, but it’s been a couple decades by now, I think.”

Sojiro lets out a low whistle. “Being stuck at sixteen for twenty years? Kid, I think I’d go insane.”

“You have no idea,” Akira says with a sigh, emptying the sliced vegetables into the pot. ”They don’t always last the same length. It starts today, April 9th, on the train ride here. I usually get to early December, at least, before it restarts.”

“What restarts it?”

“I die,” Akira says, and it’s somehow easier to break the news to his father figure than his friends. Practice makes perfect, after all. “It doesn’t matter how.”

“You die?” Sojiro exclaims, loud and sudden enough to make Akira jump. “Holy shit, kid!” Sojiro runs a hand over his head, distressed. “Do you remember it? Does it hurt you?”

Akira can’t stop a tiny smile at the concern. This is a definite improvement from Sojiro’s furious outbursts ten minutes ago. “I mean, yeah. Dying _sucks_. But it’s not like any injuries carry over or whatever, so it’s fine.”

“‘ _So it’s fine,_ ’ bullshit,” snaps Sojiro. “Why do you keep dying, then? High schoolers aren’t known for their tendency to drop dead at any given moment. What is it, the yakuza?”

Akira looks up from carefully cutting meat. “I told you. It’s about cognitive psience. Messing around with it is _dangerous,_ and I’ve never been the most careful about using it.”

“How do you even - nevermind,” Sojiro throws up his hands, “I don’t want to know. Are all of your friends in on this, too?”

“Yeah, but I’m the only one who loops.” He adds, “But everybody else remembered too, this time. I don’t - I don’t know _why._ I don’t know what I did differently.”

“First time for everything,” Sojiro mutters. “That’s why you wanted to talk to them alone, right? And why you seemed as shocked as everybody else when you saw Futaba.” A pause, and then, “That means she’s involved in this too, isn’t she?”

Akira bites the inside of his cheek. “Yeah. She usually doesn’t join us until July, and even then, there’s been a few times that she doesn’t even do that.” He answers Sojiro’s unasked question, “She doesn’t fight, though, not like the rest of us. She’s a lot more removed from the danger than we are.”

“How come?”

“She’s our navigator, in the Metaverse,” Akira doesn’t bother to elaborate on that. “It’s complicated. We all have to fight our way through, but she just guides us and provides backup when we need it.”

“If it’s so dangerous, why do you all keep going in? Have you ever tried just being _normal?”_

“Tried that once, didn’t work,” Akira says. “Besides, going into the Metaverse helps people. Us changing Futaba’s heart is the reason she was able to even come out here today. _Somebody_ has to do it, and it might as well be me.” He points at the coffee rack behind Sojiro. “Hey, could I grab some of that?”

"Why?” Sojiro asks even as he moves aside.

“Coffee enhances the flavor!” Akira says brightly as he slips by. He grabs a cup of the Mocha Matari beans as he goes. “It’ll make the curry more bitter, and the chocolate and wine undertones of this blend gives it depth!”

“Show off,” Sojiro says. “So, then, you live under my roof and keep all of these secrets from me?”

“You usually find out.”

“Not by you telling me?”

“You’re sharp enough on your own.” 

“Ever brought that danger back with you, then?”

“Depends on what you define as danger.”

“Tch, brat.” Sojiro stares down the stove as Akira begins adding the spices. “Don’t bother making rice with that. I’ll be fine without it.”

“Alright,” Akira responds easily. “Although, you should know that rice _is_ a staple and balances out any dish-”

“Shut it,” Sojiro grumbles half-heartedly, and Akira can’t help but laugh. 

He’s just setting the curry to simmer when they turn to hear the sounds of someone loudly clambering down the attic stairs. “Akira’s making curry!” Futaba sing-songs as she reaches the ground floor. She hops onto one of the bar stools and rests her chin in her hand, orange hair still tangled from sleep. “Have you convinced Sojiro we’re not crazy yet?”

Akira sneaks a glance over to their guardian, who is still staring at Futaba with unguarded wonder. Seeing her so animated and social after years of total lethargy and finally being unburdened of the guilt of her mother’s death must be nothing short of a miracle to him. Noticing Akira looking at him, Sojiro chuckles. “Not even close,” he tells Futaba.

She groans dramatically, letting her head fall forward onto the bar. “Ugh, stupid Sojiro,” she mumbles into the polished wood.

“Curry’s done!” Akira announces after a sizable pause. After a moment’s thought, he ladles the steaming curry onto three separate plates. It’s not as spicy as he usually makes it, but he’s pretty sure Sojiro wouldn’t appreciate him putting much love into it right now.

Futaba wrinkles her nose when Akira sets her plate down in front of her. “No rice?”

“That’s what I said, too!”

“Hush, both of you,” Sojiro says. He picks at his own helping, brow furrowing in concentration as he examines it. In the meantime, Akira starts to eat, leaning one hip against the kitchen sink to balance himself. In this timeline, he hasn’t eaten anything in hours, but mentally, he hasn’t eaten anything all day besides a stale katsu bun that his nerves reduced to tasting like sawdust. Despite how perilous the situation itself is, eating hot curry in Leblanc surrounded by his adopted family was comforting in its familiarity. There are few things that he bothers to keep relatively constant, and this is one of them.

The times that he doesn’t allow himself this simple support system tend not to be timelines that he’s particularly fond of.

Akira and Futaba both watch Sojiro with bated breath as he takes his first bite. Mulling it over, he finally admits, “It’s good.”

“Good?” Futaba exclaims incredulously. She shoves another spoonful in her mouth. “Akira’s curry is great!”

Sojiro sighs harshly. “Listen, kid,” he says to Akira. “Your story is outlandish. It sounds like you’re just telling me the plot of one of those weird space shows,” Akira cringes, so Sojiro adds, “ _but,_ I worked in the government for a while,” when no one reacts to the information, he mutters, “which I guess you already knew. Anyway,” he shakes his head, “it gives you a feel of when people are _lying_ to me, and you,” he jabs his spoon at Akira, “aren’t.”

Futaba lights up. “So everything’s okay?”

Sojiro squints at him, suspicious. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he tells Akira. “I’ll let you stay here and take care of you. But, the moment you start dragging that stuff back here with you out of the Meta-whatever, you’re leaving Futaba out of it. I can’t stop you from whatever it is you do, but I’m not going to let you hurt her! I won’t hesitate to kick you outta here so fast it’ll make your head spin. Am I clear?”

Sojiro made a deal with him. Lavenza is silent. There’s no confidant written. The Hierophant arcana is nonexistent.

“ _Sojiro!”_ Futaba hisses. They both ignore her.

Akira nods back at Sojiro. “I won’t let you down.”

“Also, I’m making you help around the shop. Your curry is passable.” When Akira opens his mouth to argue, he says, “You’re a bit heavy handed with that coffee, kid. You still have plenty to learn.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. Kids, I’m gonna head out. I need to think. You,” he points at Futaba, “get home fast, and you,” he turns to Akira, “finish cleaning up here.”

Before he moves to leave, Akira remembers to tell him, “You have to take me to the school tomorrow to meet with the teachers. Take the car - there’s going to be an accident on the train and you won’t get back in time to open the cafe.”

“You’re creepy when you do that, you know?” He sighs and wipes his hands on a rag. “Deal’s a deal, then. See you.”

“Also, um, do you have a journal to give me? You usually have one to make me keep track of my daily activities for my probation.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sojiro waves a hand and turns away. He digs a simple black journal out from underneath the register. Akira tries not to seem too eager when he snatches it from him, clutching it close to his chest. He _needs_ to remember what’s going on in this loop, more so than with any of the others. There’s too much information in his head, layers and layers of the same situation overlapping into one blur, all turning indistinguishable from the rest. He can’t let that happen now.

It doesn’t take long for Sojiro to exit Leblanc, but Futaba refuses to leave immediately. Instead, she bites at her lip, and then says, “Inari never responded.”

Akira taps his fingers erratically against the spine of his new journal. “No,” he whispers. “He didn’t.”

“Did you-”

“I called him five times while you were still asleep and only got his voicemail.”

“Oh.”

“Futaba, Yusuke’s smart, okay? He’ll be fine. I’ll text the plan again on the group chat tonight, and if he still doesn’t show up tomorrow morning we’ll figure it out from there.”

Futaba messes with the long sleeve of her sweater thoughtfully. “Okay. I trust you.” She fidgets uncertainly, then rushes at Akira. Just because he’s expecting her full-body hug this time doesn’t mean that he’s fully prepared for it, and he stumbles back against the bar as she presses her face against his chest, circling her arms around his back to squeeze him closer. He hates being held, but at least her position and baggy clothing allows him to lightly hug her back without actually touching her skin.

“I was really scared when I w-woke up alone,” she confesses, voice muffled against the fabric of his blazer. “I thought you’d all d-died or everything had just been a _dream_ or something and I was all alone again!”

He pats her head, trying for comfort. She relaxes into his hold. “Hey, hey, Futaba. Don’t worry about me, okay? I promise that we’ll all get through this together.”

“But you can’t promise that!” she argues. “What if you die again and this is all for nothing?!”

“It won’t be,” he reassures her. He taps at his temple. “Even if something _does_ go wrong, I’ll still remember all of this. I’ll know what you all did for me.”

Futaba rears her head back to look at him, her eyes shiny. “You’ll tell me, won’t you?” she demands. “If I d-don’t remember, you have to promise to tell me everything! I promise I’ll believe you! I know I will!!!”

Akira gives her a tight smile. “Everything’s gonna turn out fine,” he tells her, “but _if_ I have to restart, you’ll be the first person I talk to, alright?”

Lying gets easier, over time.

She nods, determined, and buries her face against his chest again. He gives her a few more moments and then slowly starts to untangle them. “Boss is gonna start worrying if you keep him waiting for too long.”

Futaba finally steps away, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve, and Akira attempts to hide his relief at the physical distance. “Yeah,” she agrees, voice thick. “See you tomorrow morning?”

Akira’s smile is more genuine, this time. “Yep.” When she doesn’t move, he adds, “Goodnight, Futaba.”

“‘Night, Akira,” she says with a wave, and finally scampers off.

Akira locks the door behind her with a sigh, relishing in the feeling of being completely alone for once. He turns back to the bar and the empty journal. It doesn’t take long for him to locate a pen, and he clicks it absentmindedly as he flips to the first page. He hops up onto a bar stool and hooks one foot around the leg as he starts to write in copious detail about the head-spinning events of the last few hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never made curry before and it shows.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Phantom Thief hangs out with his father figure. :(

Fox was dying. Pinned to the ground by an unimaginable power and wheezing with barely formed breaths, he could all but count the moments before he finally succumbed to his injuries. He’d always been able to find the inherent beauty in everything, before, but the realization that there was nothing artistic in death rings hollow. Art was nothing but a fleeting love next to the all-consuming emotional upheaval that Yaldabaoth’s very presence inspired. 

There’s darkness, then, twin swirls of delicate blue wings and a soft child’s voice, a stark dichotomy against the violence that Fox had participated in mere moments ago. There’s another person speaking, Joker, perhaps, but Fox can hardly make out their conversation past the incessant roaring in his ears. The cerulean light expands, unyielding in its brilliance.

Yusuke opens his eyes to a familiar canvas. Sunlight streams through an open window into a warm wooden room, illuminating the sweeping amber gradients and delicate black detail work. He’s holding a paintbrush dipped in red, the pointed tip mere millimeters away from the surface of the painting. The work in front of him is something he knows well, one that he had toiled on for weeks in order to be declared satisfactory for Madarame’s exhibition in May. Instinctually, he completes the brush stroke, highlighting the spindly limb of a tree.

A kindly voice speaks over his shoulder, one that Yusuke hasn’t truly heard in months but has echoed in his ears at every showcase all the same. “Yus-kun,” his mentor chides, honey sweet as he says the familiar nickname, “while it is commendable that you wish to approach this piece with such ambition, you know that the addition of multiple warm tones causes the painting to lack the creative simplicity that you are attempting to evoke.” The _“if this isn’t perfect, it will be reflected badly upon me, and the consequences will be grave”_ goes unsaid.

Yusuke’s head whips around, breath stopping as he comes face to face with Madarame. Sensei looks back at him with soft, brown eyes. Brown, not ethereal gold, as they had been when they bored into his own just hours ago. Real.

Panicked, Yusuke launches himself backward, his paintbrush streaking a brilliant scarlet line haphazardly across the careful landscape like a bloody wound. He lands on the floor in an ungainly mess and frantically clambers backwards, keeping Sensei fully in his sight. Yaldabaoth must have created realistic illusions in order to tamper with their concentration, another display of sadistic control over his team by separating them to confront their individual nightmares.

If Yusuke was seeing his Sensei in front of him in a perfect snapshot from his life before the fated change of heart, he could barely imagine what the others were going through.

“Yusuke!” Sensei rushes around Yusuke’s abandoned seat. He refuses to kneel, instead looming above Yusuke and blocking out the meager light. Madarame clasps a frail hand on Yusuke’s shoulder, expression pinched in worry. His thumb brushes gently over an exposed collarbone, a breadcrumb of affection, enough to convince his ward that he’s cared for, _loved_ within the walls of the decrepit shack he had called home.

Once, Yusuke might have fallen for it. He knows better than to, now.

He throws off Madarame’s hand and brandishes his paintbrush like a pathetic imitation of his katana. “What did you do?” he demands, and the incredibly tangible imitation of Madarame rears back at the ice in his tone. “What have you done with the others?”

“Yusuke,” Sensei says patiently, “you’re not making any sense.” When Yusuke starts shaking his head stubbornly, he adds, “I’ve noticed that you’ve been staying up late in order to complete your projects. You haven’t been eating, have you?”

There wouldn’t have been food in the atelier anyway. There hardly ever was. Right now, Yusuke only needed to escape this petty illusion and find his way back to the others, into the sickening fusion of Shibuya and Mementos.

Yusuke pushes himself to his feet, relishing the immediate height advantage he gains over his former mentor. He was no longer wearing his kitsune mask, which meant that he had somehow exited the Metaverse. He trusted that he wouldn’t need it to overpower Yaldabaoth’s imitation of Madarame. He squares his shoulders, a hard-fought gesture that Madarame himself would never have expected of his ward. The existence of a plan, simple and half-formed as it may be, was comforting, a reliable goal to work towards and a welcome distraction from the expanding horror in his chest.

“What form of manipulation is this? What can you possibly hope to gain from showing me the form of my mother’s murderer?” Yusuke jeers at him, Yaldabaoth under a shudderingly familiar face.

Madarame’s eyes widen comically. “What are you talking about?”

“Did you dig through my memories, Yaldabaoth? Or did you learn about it when the real Madarame confessed?” He sweeps his arm in front of him, and the fake Madarame stumbles back. The illusion is the only thing blocking him from the exit. “Your imitation is as pathetic as the phony _Sayuri_ s!”

“‘Phony _Sayuri_ s?’” Madarame echoes, gaze hardening. “Yusuke, you don’t know of what you’re speaking!”

Through months of working through his art block with Akira, Yusuke knows that Madarame had, deep in his heart, cared for him. He had been abruptly saddled with the task of raising a young child, and at the beginning, attempted to do so to the best of his ability. Madarame had nurtured Yusuke’s love for art and taught him the advanced techniques that now elevated him above his fellow students at Kosei. 

Those morsels of positive memories did nothing to change Madarame’s actions. He’d plagiarized the work of his students, draining away their passion until they abandoned him, or worse. He had kept Yusuke locked away from the rest of the world, neglecting his health and happiness in order to transform him into the perfect blueprint to base upon his future abuse of his trusting pupils. In the end, he’d never seen Yusuke as anything more than just another of his poor works of art, something to be greedily consumed until it had been squeezed dry of all its usefulness and discarded.

Yusuke was never granted the chance to confront his former sensei about his wrongdoings outside of the Metaverse. If he was forced to be entirely honest, he could not deny that he was relishing the opportunity.

Yusuke advances. “My mother was the one who painted the original _Sayuri_ , and you _killed her!_ You defaced her final work and then created cheap copies because of your own overwhelming greed.” A few more steps, and he’d be out the door, away from Madarame and his shack. He finds himself pausing, instead. “You were never an artist,” he hisses. “You are nothing but a despicable fiend who wears the _skin_ of an artist!”

“Yusuke,” Madarame spits his name like it’s an insult, humble pretenses vanishing with the underlying threats, “I would think twice before making any _rash_ decisions! The idiots of the art world _worship_ me.”

“Then they worship a false, meager shell of a human being!”

“Who would believe you, then? You have no proof. You are _nothing_ without me! I could kick you out on the street right now and destroy your entire future, and no one would even think to care!” 

“I have no need for your influences or excuses. Everything you have done, I know that I can do better! Unlike you, I can stand with my _own_ merit, rather than stealing it away from others!”

“I will _destroy you_ before you can even think to open your mouth!” Madarame snarls at him, fists clenched, pinning Yusuke under the same terrifying gaze that had followed him since childhood. He can hardly stop himself from shying away. The world feels too solid.

Always, the Metaverse has a certain dream-like quality. It was built upon the distortions of others, after all, and people viewed reality through a discolored lens. It is evident in the buoyancy and splashes of neon colors underneath their boots whenever the Phantom Thieves infiltrated Palaces. Everything was decided by one’s mental fortitude rather than physical. Their senses sharpened, as if the air itself was lighter and easier to navigate. Pain felt different. Even when Shibuya had melded with Mementos, the familiar trappings of the Metaverse had not faded from their minds.

Yusuke feels none of that, now. It’s worse, even - he hasn’t felt this physically weakened since before he had joined the Phantom Thieves. He had never shared Ryuji and Akira’s obsessive affinity for training, but they had occasionally managed to drag him along on their gym excursions anyway. His poor money management made his eating habits woeful at the best of times, but his friends had always ensured that he was never at the brink of complete starvation.

It’s like none of the events of the past few months had ever happened. As if everything that Yusuke had worked for had been wiped away in a single fell swoop.

Yusuke wasn’t in the Metaverse. That meant the Madarame in front of him was real, wasn’t he?

He needs to escape and find the others, _now._ And like a cornered animal, the panic makes him desperate.

Yusuke had always been on the overly malnourished side of healthy, and Madarame was much stronger than he appeared. It’s almost embarrassingly easy in the way Madarame dodges Yusuke’s harried punch and uses the forward momentum to all but bowl him over, catching him around the waist and slamming him unceremoniously against the doorframe. Yusuke’s breath hitches painfully, and he slams his elbow into Madarame’s shoulder. Madarame caves underneath the sharp pressure with a grunt, vice grip faltering. Before Yusuke can clamber out of the cage of his arms, Madarame retaliates by hitting Yusuke across the head with enough force to make faint stars bloom across his vision. 

Madarame bares his teeth at him, animalistic in a way that Yusuke had never before seen him, even within the garish confines of his own gilded Palace. The last time he had threatened Yusuke in the real world, it was with the promise to call security to have him dragged away from the only place he’d ever called home kicking and screaming. Now, with the accusations of assisted murder and implied kidnapping alongside the initial forgery, the consequences are disastrous. No matter how correct Madarame was in his assumption that Yusuke’s voice would be drowned out and ostracized against his own, even one dissenting opinion, especially forthcoming from someone so famously close to him, was enough to put an irreparable dent in his constructed reputation and sow doubt for years to come. 

Yusuke had never thought to question why his room had no windows or only ever locked from the outside until Madarame shoves him within it and traps him inside. Stumbling to his feet, he immediately lunges towards the door, scrabbling at the handle desperately. When that fails, he shoves his shoulder against the unyielding door. Furious, he yells, “You cannot keep me trapped in here forever!” 

Madarame’s breathing is ragged even through the wooden barrier. “You will stay in there for as long as it takes you to know better than to accuse me of obvious falsehoods!”

Yusuke steps away from the door and forces himself to take a few rationalizing breaths to calm himself. He needs to stay level-headed in this impossible situation. As Madarame raves outside, Yusuke catalogues his room and is unsurprised to find nothing of value. In all the time he had lived at the atelier, his bedroom has always been sparse. His futon was shoved into the corner, barely covered by a thinning sheet. The sketches tacked onto the walls were drawn on cheap paper rather than canvas, hurried pieces he’d created late at night and early in the morning when the sudden snapshots of images in his head became too overwhelming to wait for him to dash to the studio or find proper supplies beyond the nearest chunk of charcoal. He had a heavy wooden dresser, but he currently did not possess the raw physical strength needed to force it through the locked door. It would not have been an issue with Kamu Susano-o’s help, but stuck alone in reality as he was, he was no match for its weight.

Yusuke puts a hand on his chin, analyzing the situation. This was the most basic component of artistry, after all: figuring out how to combine elements in order to create something entirely new. All he needed to do was fit his resources together like puzzle pieces, as easy as working with different mediums within the same work of art.

Brute force is out of the question, and the only point of exit was the door before him. The main lock was built into the outside door handle, sealable with a turn rather than requiring a key. The opposite handle, facing the bedroom, was a different story. Carved into it was a tiny, hexagonal hole, only a few millimeters in diameter. In theory, the cavity was deep enough to go through the wood door and into the opposite handle. Yusuke knows its purpose: it was meant to be picked open by a skinny metal rod, the ultimate fail safe if the inside doors jammed shut as they were often known to do. He’s only seen one of those such devices utilized twice during his stay with Madarame, as the doors were rarely locked in the first place. 

There was a device within every room with a lock in the house. In theory, if he were to locate the lockpick within the bedroom, he would be able to escape. However, he’d never learned the skill of lock picking, only ever bearing witness to Akira or one of Madarame’s past students doing so. This lock was, at the very least, much more simple to navigate than the ones present in the Metaverse or on the atelier’s front door. It couldn’t possibly take a vast amount of time or effort to figure out how to correctly maneuver it. 

The only problem with the plan is that Yusuke knows without a doubt that the pick is not in his room. It is currently in the studio, where it has resided for some weeks now. Attempting fine detail work on a sculpture, he’d determined that the thin, flattened edges were much better suited to carve delicate lines through clay rather than sitting unused, awaiting a rare scenario. He’d never bothered to return it to its proper place in his room, instead adding it to his precious collection of artistic instruments.

He truly was a fool, wasn’t he? 

The most viable solution would be to craft his own version. Yusuke is nothing if not a perfectionist, but he would accept even the most crude of makeshift devices if it could force the door open. 

Madarame has finally fallen silent through the barrier, but Yusuke spares him no thought as he stalks further into his room, searching for a suitable replacement. His main problem would be the width: small enough to fit into the hole but large enough to still interact with the internal mechanisms. That criteria alone immediately eliminated most of the items in his room, unless he found a way to properly shave them down to a proper size. The closest thing he had to a blade were the tacks studded into the wall, but the razor sharp tips were useless for carving and too short to be utilized on their own.

His gaze trails from the tacks to the sketches they’re attached to. Or, more accurately, the paper those drawings reside on. He’d have to fold it multiple times over to get close to the strength and width required, which was a near impossible task to accomplish with such a delicate, thin material that tended to tear into pieces if he made too hard a pencil scratch, much less a crease. He would have to layer it thickly to ensure that it wouldn’t immediately fall apart upon being forced blindly into metal. It was far from ideal, but it was currently the best idea that he had.

If he were to be blunt, it was also the only idea he had. The others would have been able to figure out something cleverer and easier than folding multiple sheets of paper together with little way to attach them, but it was only Yusuke that was stuck here. He had to reunite with his friends as quickly as possible. He had no clue what they were going through, or even where they ended up. Perhaps he was the only one to travel back through time, leaving himself stranded months away from the rest of the Phantom Thieves and their siege upon Yaldabaoth. Were they searching for him? Did they have any idea what had happened?

He cannot afford to dwell on those questions currently. Right now, there’s nothing to be done for them other than him finding a way out of Madarame’s clutches. With purpose, he approaches the drawings, carefully detaching them from the wall and shuffling them in his hands. He sits down, circled by a loose ring of forgotten tacks, and stacks them neatly in front of him, altogether barely the height of a single centimeter.

His head still aches from Madarame's hit, current body exhausted from recent lack of sleep. Nevertheless, Yusuke reaches for the top of the pile and gets to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dang it's almost like there are consequences for Akira not immediately tracking down all of his teammates :/
> 
> Next time: something a little bit different ;)


	6. Coda, II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the second time, Akira wakes up on a train.

Joker stands in the shadow of a god. Wind whips through his hair, and he has to dig his heels into the sleek surface of Mementos to avoid being swept away by the shifts from Yaldabaoth’s great wings. The corners of his vision are tinged red, framed by the spindly arches of Mementos and his own blood leaking down his forehead and over his mask. Power thrums within him, and his personas ache against his mind, desperate to fight.

He feels impossibly small, eclipsed beneath Yaldabaoth. Even in the midst of battle, adrenaline running through his veins and heart thumping uncontrollably, he feels the oppressive hopelessness of their task, nothing but a mere mortal in the face of impossible odds. The position does nothing but reaffirm the grounding purpose newly instilled by Lavenza and the real Igor, the need to protect his teammates and the world more overwhelming than the terror. He stares up at Yaldabaoth, defiant.

Yaldabaoth looks down upon them, its blank mask revealing nothing. A parody of a laugh scrapes out of it, drowning out the shouts of the masses below. “How foolish you must be,” it purrs, “to think you ever had a chance to defeat _me.”_

“The only one getting defeated here will be you!” Skull yells back, fists clenched in righteous rage. The other Thieves let out whoops of agreement. The god of control had no claim over them, and despite everything, Joker grins wildly. An uncontrollable force pounds within him, something that feels dangerously like Arsene, but stronger, _better._

Like Joker himself.

“The hubris of humanity will never cease to astound me,” Yaldabaoth says, and in a moment, the tables are turned.

Yaldabaoth rises above them, blocking out the sky and casting the entire world into shadow. The Phantom Thieves’ attacks bounce off of its skin and back onto them, forcing them to succumb to their own weaknesses. It casts magic that immediately sows insanity within their ranks, and Joker watches in horror as Noir attacks Panther with a deranged snarl, a deadly force with no need for the sweet package.

Between the span of one breath and another, Joker is surrounded by his teammates, curled up and gasping on the ground together. Valiantly, Joker tries to rise to his hands and knees, but his body betrays him, and he collapses. When he finally manages to look up, Yaldabaoth has eyes only for him. “Trickster,” it says. “You have always been destined to fall to me. There was never another way. There will never _be_ another way.”

“What are you talking about?” 

Yaldabaoth cocks its head like a curious child rather than a devastating vessel of destruction. “Would you like to see?”

Yaldabaoth does not grant him the mercy of a response.

  
  


Akira wakes up on a train. It rumbles underneath him, rattling his teeth as it bumps against the railroad. He immediately shoots to his feet, breath coming in short gasps. He stumbles over his fallen bags and crashes into another train passenger. The people stare at him, expressions ranging from concerned to disdainful as Akira whirls around.

“What happened!?” he demands. “Where is everybody?”

A teenage girl and her friend stare at him warily. “Um,” she says, and leaves it at that.

Akira tugs furiously at his hair and turns to the window. The outside world races by, and he can feel the warmth of the sun on his skin through the smudged glass, hotter than the December air should allow. The view of the city is clear and bright. There is no Mementos rising in ugly spines to mar the sky, absolutely nothing to suggest Yaldabaoth’s unfathomable wrath towards them all.

“Okay,” Akira faintly hears himself say, and then promptly bends over to vomit all over his shoes.

The girls shriek and jump away from him, and the space around him immediately empties as passengers rush to put distance between themselves and Akira. He can’t bring himself to care as he gags. Someone puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and rubs his back gently, and he shivers, exhausted.

The train coolly announces its arrival and people hurriedly clear a path for him as he stumbles out onto the station. He emerges into Yongen-Jaya on autopilot, the still cognitive part of his mind desperate for something familiar to grasp onto. He wipes the back of his hand roughly against his mouth and chin, fighting to stop another wave of vomit from rising within him. The lingering taste of bile is harsh against his tongue. He needs to head to Leblanc before trying to seek out his friends. Going back to their hideout is the most reliable start to figuring out what Yaldabaoth had done to them.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he pulls it out with shaking hands. The Metaverse app. It’s opened by itself, enlarged and waiting.

Akira taps at it. Nothing.

The comforting background bustle of the city quietens, and Akira raises his head, startled. Around him, the entire world has frozen. People stand awkwardly, suddenly paused in the act of living their lives, and the familiar sounds drain away to a spine-tingling total silence.

He hasn’t seen anything like this, not since April.

Across the square, something bursts into blue flames, hot enough to stinge Akira’s skin from hundreds of feet away. Demonic eyes meet his own, chilling and golden.

Arsene grins, and Akira matches his expression.

As suddenly as Arsene had appeared, he snaps out of existence, taking the excruciating heat with him. The world restarts, completely unaware. The MetaNav app minimizes itself, tucking calmly back amongst the others on his phone, inconspicuous as always.

Leblanc. Akira needs to get back to Leblanc and meet up with the others.

He bursts through the cafe’s door with a gusto that immediately silences the few patrons presents. Sojiro’s head whips towards him as Akira pauses at the doorway, chest heaving. “Hey, Boss,” Akira says weakly, and Sojiro’s eyebrows jump.

“Listen,” Sojiro slides around the counter, approaching him slowly. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re causing a disturbance. I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

Akira blinks up at him. “Wait, what?”

Sojiro’s nose wrinkles as he finally arrives in front of him. “You smell like vomit, kid. Ugh, and look like it too.”

Sojiro has absolutely no recognition in his eyes, so Akira says, “Boss, it’s me.” A pause, marked only by Sojiro’s slowly raising eyebrow. _“Akira.”_

“Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“You’re my probation guardian? Sojiro Sakura?” Akira continues, dumbstruck.

“Oh!” Sojiro says, snapping his fingers with recognition. The guarded expression returns immediately. “They said you’d be coming today, didn’t they? I was wondering what kind of delinquent they’d saddle me with, but I didn’t expect,” he gestures to Akira, _“this."_

“What’s happening right now, exactly?”

“You tell me, brat. I’ll show you to the attic now. Do you have any luggage?”

Akira had accidentally abandoned it all on the train. “No?”

Sojiro groans. “Of course you don’t. I’ll find you some toiletries later. Come with me.”

“Alright,” Akira says, baffled, and trails after Sojiro. The elderly couple unsubtly lean away from him as they pass, and Akira can already see the man hurriedly searching for his wallet. It’s definitely not the first time Akira has chased off Leblanc’s customers, but it makes him wince all the same.

Maybe the Phantom Thieves had been erased from the public’s cognition again? He shudders, remembering the pouring scarlet rain and the screams of his friends as they vanished into thin air. But if that was the case, why was Akira still here? Shouldn’t he have disappeared along with the rest?

Sojiro shows him to the attic, and it’s even dirtier than Akira remembered it being when he’d first arrived. The only thing resembling personal belongings is the cardboard box containing his clothes. Other than that, the attic is nothing but a glorified storage unit. Akira only half listens as Sojiro talks about the circumstances of his probation. His thoughts are a tangled, confusing _mess._ Nothing makes any sense.

It’s like the year has started all over again. But that isn’t possible, right?

When Sojiro finally leaves Akira to his own devices - with a scowl and a demand to _clean yourself up, for the love of god_ \- the first thing he does is collapse onto his sorry excuse for a bed. He doesn’t bother brushing off the grime that’s accumulated from years of disuse, instead burying his head in the thin pillow.

He needs to talk to Lavenza and Igor. He has to access the Velvet Room, the place between mind and matter, dreams and reality.

  
  
  


Akira wakes up in a jail cell. The tattered, striped uniform is sickeningly familiar. When he looks up, his stomach drops.

Staring back at him are Caroline and Justine, their twin eye-patches doing nothing to mask their disdainful expressions. Beyond them sits Igor, sinister in his glee.

Akira moves to grasp his head, but finds himself stopped by shackles. He tugs on the heavy metal chains furiously, an act that accomplishes nothing but to chafe at his wrists and shoot daggers of pain down his arms. The trio observes him uncaringly as he struggles to stand.

“Please be more respectful,” Justine murmurs, gripping the edges of her clipboard tightly. “You’re in the presence of our master.”

Caroline bangs against the prison bars with her baton and seems immensely satisfied when Akira flinches back at the harsh clanging of metal-on-metal and stray sparks of electricity. “That’s right! Stand up straight, inmate!”

“Now now, girls,” Igor says, voice rough and that’s - _that’s not Igor, is it?_ “Let him breathe. I know you must be confused, Trickster. Know that there is nothing to fear here. Welcome to my Velvet Room.”

“It’s not yours,” Akira is speaking before he can think better of it. “It’s not _yours,_ you stole it!”

Yaldabaoth rears back in shock. “What?” it asks.

Akira turns his attention to the twins. “Lavenza, right?” he prompts them. “You remember, don’t you? The real Igor was locked away by an impostor. You were split in half to be made complicit. You were never meant to be wardens!”

Caroline stumbles away from his cell as Justine drops her clipboard with a noisy clatter. “No, we-”

Akira rounds on Yaldabaoth and slams his chains against the cell door. The angry metallic ring echoes throughout the room, surreal in the stiff air. “What did you do?!” he demands. “What’s going on?”

Yaldabaoth’s eyes narrow, scrutinizing him, before its face splits into something resembling a grin, cracked lips parting to reveal too many teeth. Its eyes gleam dangerously as it leans over its polished desk, ravenous. “Ah, now I understand. It appears that the Ruin has already befallen upon you, Trickster. No matter. The game continues on.”

“Start making sense!” 

“Girls!” Yaldabaoth commands with a snap of his long, grotesque fingers. The twins immediately straighten to attention, conflicted expressions clearing in the blink of an eye. “It appears that the inmate is _beyond_ rehabilitation. He requires execution.”

Their faces are horrifyingly blank, as if they’re nothing but puppets. Akira’s cell doors wrench open, but before he can even think to attempt to escape, the twins latch onto his chains, dragging him out with a supernatural strength and ignoring his panicked thrashings. “Let me go! You know I’m right!”

They force him onto his knees, and Caroline silently wrestles a thick bag over his head. In total darkness, Akira’s breath shortens, on the edge of hyperventilation. He desperately scrounges for the familiar presence of a Persona, something, _anything,_ to come to his aid, but he finds nothing in the recesses of his mind.

Akira is completely alone, and he has no _idea_ what to do.

The thing about guillotines is that the execution happens neatly, faster than the blink of an eye, quicker than a single thought.

The time waiting before the blade slices down, however, is a completely different story.

  
  
  


Akira wakes up on a train.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all thought I wasn't gonna write about the previous loops? Say it ain't so!
> 
> This is the first one of the codas, which will basically function as one shots about Akira's past loops. I'm currently only planning on writing nine, which will be scattered at various points throughout the main fic. That number may change later on, but I'm trying to focus on the ones that had a definite impact on Akira's current mindset, rather than ones that were more mundane.
> 
> Also, you can find me at frigidlyauthorial on tumblr! I'd love to chat with you all.


	7. Chapter 7

Akira wakes up from one of the most stressful afternoons in his life feeling better rested than he has in decades. Like all things positive in his life, it’s immediately a cause for concern.

Today is April 10th, and he hadn’t dreamt of the Velvet Room. There was no jolting awake in shackles that burned like ice on his skin. No struggling to drag a heavy ball and chain across the floor as he shuffled through the stale prison cell, trapped underneath three piercing gazes. No soft reprimands from Justine or Caroline’s screeching commands. No Igor speaking to him behind his permanent grin as if they’d never met before, like a benevolent spirit who only wished to aid a lost, helpless child, unrepentant even as he played the unrelenting role of warden. Instead, sleep had been dark and calming, like the mindscape Lavenza had created to speak to him one final time. It’s a bit like a gift, but it feels more like a nightmare.

Akira has been in Tokyo for nearly twenty-four hours, and not once has the Metaverse attempted to reach out to him. It was missing every single scripted cue, like a fumbling actor rather than the physical embodiment of the collective human psyche. There’s a _pattern_ to these loops, and without the familiar landmarks, Akira is already off-kilter. He wraps his arms around himself as he sits upright in his bed and rests his forehead against his knees. He drums his fingers anxiously against the soft fabric of his pajama sleeve as he exhales, attempting to parse through the rapidly descending fog in his mind.

It’s always difficult, in the first few days, to remember any differences. At the beginning, everything is always so _routine_ that he never even bothers to write the events down in his journal. On April 9th, he arrives at Leblanc, where he becomes the ward of Sojiro Sakura. He cleans out the attic. He dreams of the Velvet Room. The next day, he meets his teachers. There’s no reason to be anything more than an inconspicuous student looking to start over, so why risk ruining the image so early?

Something was changing today, though. He twitches, brow furrowing as he tries to sort through his thoughts, aligning memories upon memories of the same series of events. Oh, Morgana. That’s right. He was rescuing Morgana from Kamoshida’s Palace today. But why would he do that? Sojiro was always so prickly in April and maneuvering around him would take more effort than Akira was willing to give. If he had wanted to get Morgana early, he should have just taken a detour yesterday from the station instead of waiting until now. Stealing Kamoshida’s treasure before the school year even started wasn’t worth the possibility of getting caught.

Also, an extra night alone would be nice. Morgana may only be a foot long and incapable of enforcing any actual rules, but there were times that he genuinely felt like the bane of Akira’s existence. There was no real harm in letting him sit in a cognitive cell for a little while longer, was there?

No, there was a reason he was going today. He knows that it had something to do with Ryuji and the others, and a vague image of the Phantom Thieves gathering in the attic and talking the day before flashes through his head, but that’s impossible. The timeline is disrupted again, Akira’s mind mixing up events and leaving him floundering like it so often did. He grits his teeth and digs his fingers painfully into his biceps in a futile attempt to ground himself to reality, curling further into himself.

Why hadn’t he dreamt of the Velvet Room?

He fumbles to grab his journal, scrabbling desperately at the leather cover as he snatches it from its resting place on the shelf by his head. His breathing slows as he reads his own neat handwriting detailing the events of the day before, meticulously copied by his past self in preparation for this exact scenario. Oh, that’s right. The others all know too, this time. That should be pretty easy to remember.

Unclipping the pen from its spine, he dates a new entry and doesn’t bother to write in code as he notes both his lack of dreams and the memory lapse that he’s still struggling to fight through. It’s odd to mention the Velvet Room so early - it’s a reliable constant. The reminder causes dread to pool in his stomach. The last loop had ended in a disaster - he’d _wanted_ some sort of break from it all, hadn’t he? Not like this, though, with the very option torn away from him. 

Akira snaps the diary shut before he can lose himself in that train of thought. He unwinds fully to sit on the edge of the bed and allows himself a few more moments to let the haze in his mind dissipate, the details of the meeting becoming clearer as the plan crystalizes. Do the Phantom Thieves know that he has memory problems? Ironically, he can’t remember if he ever told them.

He checks his phone, hoping to find a text notification and devastated to see the time on his screen instead. He hisses out a curse. Akira’s never been a morning person, and he can almost hear Morgana scolding him for sleeping late on a school day as he rushes out of bed. Futaba and Sojiro are most likely already here at Leblanc, and it’s frankly a small miracle that he hadn’t woken up to one of them shouting at him. 

It doesn’t take long for him to tug on his uniform and get ready for the day, and by the time he dashes downstairs, a plate of curry and rice is already waiting for him. From behind the counter, Sojiro quirks an eyebrow at his disheveled appearance as Futaba continues to wolf down her breakfast. “You know,” he starts casually, “the convenience store _does_ sell hairbrushes, if you’re interested in that kinda thing.”

Akira absentmindedly runs his fingers through his unruly hair, which only serves to ruffle it further. “Haven’t found one yet that works on me,” he tells Sojiro cheekily as he slides onto a stool, “but I’ll keep that in mind.”

Sojiro scoffs and leans back against the coffee dispensers, eyeing his wards. “I’m driving, you said?” he asks, and sighs wearily when Akira confirms it. “Don’t expect me to do it more than once, got it? Because I hate to break it to you, but I’m not gonna act like some kind of chauffeur for you kids.”

Akira shrugs between bites of curry. “It’s just for now. The trains won’t derail anymore after today, and it didn’t even crash on our line.”

“You really should stop talking about the future like that, brat.”

Futaba finally takes a break from shoveling food into her mouth to tilt her head. “Should we, uh, stop that?” she asks Akira, eyes flitting nervously between Akira to Sojiro and back again before squaring her shoulders. “A lot of people got hurt in that accident, didn’t they?”

Akira stops eating, spoon hovering in mid-air as he regards her. Futaba was pushing past her own insecurities because of the sole desire to save other people. She’s come a long way since declaring to only join the Phantom Thieves for the sole purpose of avenging her mother.

The character growth hardly matters, now. They can’t afford to take any unnecessary detours on this loop. He raises an eyebrow at her. “Do you really want to take on the Black Mask right _now?”_

Nevermind that he has done that in the past, and won.

Futaba turns back to her food with a frown and drags her spoon through the streaks of curry still smeared on her plate. “I guess not. I don’t like the idea of just letting it happen when we could do something.”

Akira opts not to reply to that, because he thinks like the sentiment of ‘ _Don’t worry, you get used to it,’_ would not be particularly appreciated. 

After a few minutes, Sojiro glances down at his watch. “We need to leave soon if you want to get there on time.”

Futaba nods eagerly, pushing away their earlier argument in favor of jumping off of her stool. Akira lags behind, stopping to sling his school bag over his shoulder before following them out the door. Along with his phone and journal, he’d brought a box of yesterday’s leftover curry. He doubts that he and Ryuji will need it - Akira would be shocked if they spent more than an hour inside Kamoshida’s Castle, much less long enough to actually get tired - but he learned a long time ago that the phrase ‘better safe than sorry’ could easily be the only difference between life and death.

Sojiro herds the two of them towards his car but stops Akira from getting into his usual spot in the passenger seat. “Into the back you go,” he says seriously.

Despite everything, Akira can’t help but gape. “You _always_ let me sit in the front!” he protests.

“I try not to let any guys sit up front with me.”

“That’s never stopped you before!”

Sojiro tuts and gestures to the back. Futaba sticks out her tongue playfully before ducking into the back seat, and with a defeated sigh, Akira slides in after her. He places his bag between them. It sits unnervingly still, with no Morgana poking out of the zipper to make a snarky comment. The absence feels weirder than it should.

As Sojiro starts the engine, Futaba leans over the bag to whisper at Akira, “Inari _still_ hasn’t said anything!”

Akira slouches back into his seat. Yusuke has never been the best about checking his phone, too caught up in his own head to acknowledge the buzz of a notification, but he’s never gone completely radio silent like this before. The uncertainty of the safety of his missing teammate makes Akira’s skin crawl, and he taps his foot haphazardly against the floor of the car.

He’s still their leader, and he can’t let Futaba witness any rush of guilt. “Worst case scenario,” he starts, “you girls will go to Madarame’s house while me and Ryuji rescue Morgana. Ann already knows the way there.”

“Right! You can count on us!” Futaba declares, even as she hunches in on herself. She’s gotten better at dealing with crowds, but Shibuya at rush hour may still prove to be too much for her. She’ll be fine with the others. Probably. Akira gives her an encouraging smile and hopes that she doesn’t notice how tight it is at the edges.

Traffic is light this early in the morning, and it doesn’t take long for the three of them to reach Shujin Academy. The rest of the Phantom Thieves aren’t scheduled to arrive for another half an hour - Akira doesn’t want to let them out of his sight once they’re here, desperate to see them all gathered together for the first time since Yaldabaoth’s attack. Meeting his teachers is a tedious affair, but at least he has every beat of the boring interaction memorized. The conference itself is the same as always, with Kobayakawa and Kawakami lecturing him with all of the enthusiasm of drastically underpaid faculty. He carefully wipes away any expression of impatience from his face and nods at all of the right moments - they’re already convinced that he’s a hardened criminal, no need to make their opinion of him worse before he’s even started committing any real crimes.

Futaba joins him and Sojiro as soon as they leave the office, bored after being forced to sit out in the waiting room. The secretary grimaces when Futaba springs up from her seat. “That sucked!” she shouts, voice echoing down the empty hall. “I heard everything and I just -” she makes a series of complicated hand motions in frustration “- ugh!”

Akira just hums in response, far too used to his teachers’ reactions to his very presence to feel bothered, but Sojiro frowns at the memory. He briefly gives a disapproving look to Futaba before the expression melts into something more fond - the fact that Futaba is even _here_ outweighs the fact that she’s being incredibly rude. He turns his irritation onto Akira instead. “You heard them,” Sojiro warns. “One wrong move, kid, and you’re out of here.”

Akira can’t help but snort. “No, they won’t.” With how much the faculty loved to lord it over his head, Akira was honestly surprised that they’d never actually snapped and expelled him in all of the years that he had attended. He had been _arrested_ while enrolled before, but Shujin Academy was much more obsessed with having a pristine reputation than they bothered to care about the problems of their own student body.

Sojiro’s brow furrows at the flippant answer, but he’s saved from answering as they stumble into the absolute last person that Akira had wanted to see.

Kamoshida towers over the rest of them. Akira has to crane his neck to meet his cold eyes, a stark contrast to the perfectly innocent smile on his face. Futaba squeaks and darts behind Akira, and Kamoshida’s dark gaze follows her form briefly before snapping back to him.

“You’re new here,” he drawls, sleazy tone a statement rather than a question. Rather than responding, Akira nods silently, mouth pressed into a thin line. There’s nothing Kamoshida can do to him here, outside of the Metaverse and standing next to an adult unwilling to look away from any shady actions, but his very presence makes the hairs on the back of Akira’s neck stand up, mouth going dry. He tenses, a subconscious preparation for an attack, and Kamoshida’s eyes sharpen, tracking his movements with renewed interest.

Sojiro’s gaze flicks between the two of them rapidly before he interjects himself into the stilted interaction. Akira doesn’t miss the way that he straightens from his permanent slouch as he does so. “And who are you?”

Kamoshida’s expression is much more pleasant as he turns toward Sojiro. “Suguru Kamoshida,” he introduces himself haughtily, with all of the arrogance of someone expecting to be recognized. When Sojiro doesn’t react, his face twists before smoothing out once more. “I’m the gym teacher here at Shujin.”

“Ah,” Sojiro says, unimpressed. The sour atmosphere weighs down on them all, and Akira barely resists the urge to fidget in the tense silence. Finally, Sojiro puts his hands on Futaba and Akira’s backs and begins to gently steer them around Kamoshida’s imposing figure. “We’ll just be going, then.”

Kamoshida slides in front of them in one smooth movement, cutting them off from the exit. He stares down at Akira with a curious glint in his eyes. With his fists planted firmly on his hips, he bends at the waist to leer down at him. “You got a name, kid?” he asks.

Akira grits his teeth. It’s another one of Kamoshida’s _stupid_ power plays, because Akira knows for a fact that Kamoshida’s already got Mishima swirling rumors around the school, determined to destroy any chance of Akira forming a support system before he even steps through the gates. His classmates are already convinced that he’s a dangerous felon, whispering accusations so wild that anyone with half a brain would know that they were false. But what’s important is that people avoid him, because if Akira’s alone, that means that he’s _vulnerable._

Kamoshida likes it when students are vulnerable.

Akira imagines a gaping bullet hole through Kamoshida’s forehead, centered cleanly between sickly yellow eyes. “Kurusu,” he answers shortly.

Kamoshida inclines his head, and a grin showing far too many teeth slithers onto his face. “I’ll be seeing you then, _Kurusu._ ” He steps aside, and Sojiro gives him a wide berth as he hurries Akira and Futaba through Shujin’s front door.

As they step outside into the cool morning air, Sojiro mutters, “What an _asshole_.”

Futaba grabs Akira’s sleeve and tugs him closer. “You didn’t say he’d be here,” she hisses.

“Because I didn’t know he would be.” Akira shifts away from her, uncomfortable. He’d probably just been drawn by the sound of Futaba’s yelling.

“Aren’t you supposed to know all of this already?” she asks.

“Surprises happen.” Except that they _don’t_. 

Sojiro continues to glare at Shujin Academy, uncaring of their conversation. “That guy is bad news,” he says decisively. He looks at Akira, eyes intense. “Let me and your teachers know if he starts giving you any crap.”

Despite the rare display of protectiveness, Akira barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Sure,” he deadpans.

Sojiro looks at him questioningly, but thankfully doesn’t press the issue. The three of them lapse into an uncomfortable silence. Futaba rocks back on her heels anxiously as Akira fiddles with the strap of his bag. He knows that he messed up yesterday, antagonizing his friends rather than being rational when they needed him to be the most. There are apologies in order, but they all taste bitter on his tongue. 

What do they know about his situation, anyway? What right do they have to judge him? He’s their leader - _he’s their friend?_ \- and he craves their presence, flooded with the need to keep them all close and shield them from the reality (the _game)_ that he’s been forced into. They’re his best chance at finally escaping Yaldabaoth’s time loops, but how can he expect them to truly help him? They’re young and naïve, and Akira is overestimating them like _always_ \- 

“They’re here!” Futaba exclaims, interrupting his thoughts as she stands on her toes and waves her entire arm at the entrance of the train station. Ryuji, Ann, and Makoto walk out onto the street as a single unit. It’s the same group as yesterday, but Akira can’t help but relax at the sight of his friends. He hadn’t really worried about them being trapped in the train accident, but their appearance is reassuring nonetheless. Haru isn’t with them, and neither is Yusuke. 

“Akira!” Ann yells, bounding closer as Makoto and Ryuji both wave. She stops a few feet away from them and glances at Sojiro before leaning towards Akira conspiratorially. “He didn’t kick you out, did he?”

“Sojiro would never!” Futaba protests.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Akira tells Ann.

Sojiro crosses his arms and mutters, “For now.” They ignore him.

“You’re still here.” Makoto looks between Akira and Futaba. “Both of you, thank goodness.”

“Where’s Haru?” Akira asks. He knows that she’s on her way, but impatience grips at him. There’s an overwhelming urge to see his entire team in front of him, tired but _safe_. It’s the same feeling that rolls around every September - everyone he cares about, all in one place.

He doesn’t bother asking about Yusuke. Concern for their missing member curls in his chest like a vice, but he knows that his team has even less answers than he does.

Ann waves her phone in the air. “Her driver’s almost here. She was only a few minutes away when we texted.”

Akira takes a fortifying breath and nods. “Good.”

Words burst out of Ryuji before the lingering silence can descend into something more awkward. “You ready to bust Morgana out from crappy Kamoshida’s Palace?” He pumps his fist.

There’s something off about the way he says it, buoyant and loud, mouth tilted in a way that’s not quite a smile, that briefly makes Akira pause. It’s such a _normal_ Ryuji thing to say and do, but there’s a shaky edge to it. He’s rattled about something. He’s rattled about _Akira_.

Can Akira really blame him?

The smile on Akira’s face feels wooden until he schools it into something more natural. From the odd expression on Makoto’s face, he’s not sure of how well he succeeded. “Always,” he replies, and readjusts his glasses in an effort to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.

The smooth purr of an engine alerts them all to Haru’s arrival, and Akira looks up to see her fling open the door of a sleek black car. She rushes over to them, engrained rich-girl etiquette forgotten in her haste. Makoto is the closest, and with the strength of an oncoming storm, Haru throws her arms around her. Makoto stumbles backwards under her sudden weight. By the time she seems to remember to hug back, Haru has already moved on to Ann, and then to Ryuji. Futaba dodges behind Akira to avoid getting smothered, so he finds himself with a face-full of fluffy copper-colored hair and a pair of thin arms squeezing his chest so tightly that it forces a violent huff of air out of his lungs instead. 

Delicately brushing a lock of hair away from her eyes, Haru finally steps back and gives them all a watery smile. “It’s wonderful to see you all!” She notices Sojiro lingering at Futaba’s side, and adds politely, “You as well, Sakura-san.”

Sojiro makes a noise of somewhat confused acknowledgement. Akira says, “It’s good to see you too,” after a beat of hesitation, he adds, sincerely, “I’m glad you’re safe.” His eyes skip over the rest of his team, and he amends, “ _All_ of you.”

Haru’s answering smile is small but bright, but her expression grows concerned. She gives a cursory glance to the rest of the group before looking back to Akira. “Is Yusuke not coming?”

The atmosphere darkens, and Akira finds himself meeting Makoto’s eyes. Her mouth curves into a frown, and she tilts her head slightly. She’s come to the same conclusion as him, then, and likely the same plan. Good.

“Something happened, with Madarame,” Akira theorizes haltingly. “I don’t - I don’t _know_ what,” and isn’t _that_ a pain to admit, “but Yusuke might be in danger. Here’s the plan.” He gestures to Ryuji. “Me and Ryuji will enter Kamoshida’s Palace and free Morgana. In the meantime, I want you girls to go to Shibuya and figure out what happened. Try and get in contact with him if you can.” He looks at Ann. “You still remember the way to Madarame’s, don’t you?”

Ann crosses her arms. “Yeah, I do.”

“Then I’m trusting you to lead everyone there.” Akira taps the back of his phone. “Keep texting updates. Ryuji and I’ll not be able to see them, but I want everybody to be on the same page.”

“Where are we meeting up after?” Makoto asks, all business.

He deliberates. There’s no one suspicious of them yet. The Phantom Thieves don’t even exist. Still, a ripple of unease spreads through him at the thought of anyone spotting them together and connecting the - currently nonexistent - dots. Weirder things have happened, after all.

Akira pushes the feeling away. “Leblanc.” He looks at Ryuji. “We can try and join them after we deal with Kamoshida.”

“Hell yeah.”

“Wait a second,” Sojiro interrupts them, and Akira startles. For the second time in as many days, he’d completely forgotten that Sojiro had developed a worrying streak of being with them when they make their plans, oblivious of everything they’re saying except for the fact that it’s obviously dangerous. “How are you kids planning on getting to all of these places? Shibuya? A _palace?_ "

“Oh, my driver can take us!” Haru pipes up. “I’d rather we not take the train.”

“Your driver can take you to _a palace?_ ”

“Oh, no.” She gives a trilling little laugh, and then does not elaborate. 

Makoto side-eyes her and steps in. “Boss, Haru can take us to Shibuya to look for our missing friend. The Palace is, um,” she hesitates, “it’s here. At Shujin.”

“It has to do with the Metaverse!” Futaba explains, which makes the rest of the group jolt. Akira grimaces. He’d forgotten to tell them that Sojiro now knows more about the world of the Phantom Thieves than they’d ever bothered to inform him in the previous loop.

“Oh,” Sojiro says, still looking a little lost before shaking his head. He eyes Futaba. “ _I’ll_ drive you all to Shibuya, then. I’d rather you ride with me than some stranger.”

“ _Sojiro_ -” Futaba whines.

“I don’t think that would be the best idea,” Haru says, neatly severing the beginning of their argument. “My driver won’t leave without me, and there’s a large traffic jam that we’ll have to get through. It would be best that we all stick together, correct?”

“Also, the boys will need a getaway driver,” Ann chimes in, and then winces at her own choice of words. “Because the trains will be shut down, I mean. They’ll need to get home.”

“They can walk.”

“No, we can’t,” Akira and Ryuji say in unison. Trips to the Metaverse are always exhausting ordeals, and the walk from Aoyama-Itchome to Yongen-Jaya was not a short one.

Sojiro runs a hand over his balding head and looks up to the sky, as if begging it for mercy. “Fine,” he acquiesces sullenly. “I really can’t stop you all from doing whatever _this_ is, can I?” When no one objects, he sighs. “You want me to just wait around here and lose all my business for the day? Sure.” He jabs a finger at Futaba. “But _you_ , get home safe. _Call me_.”

Futaba gives him a sloppy, mock salute. “Aye, aye, captain!”

Sojiro scowls but says nothing more. Akira looks over his team. “Good luck, everybody,” he says, and then nods once. “I’ll see you soon.”

“You too,” Makoto says, and Akira does not miss the way her concerned gaze slides deliberately from him to Ryuji and then back again. She raises a pointed eyebrow at him. Ann reaches out and squeezes his hand lightly before letting go, and then turns to follow the others to Haru’s car.

Akira looks over at Ryuji. He swallows past the zing of nervous electricity when he meets his familiar, dark eyes. “We should go.”

“Yeah,” Ryuji agrees, and together, they split off from the rest.

The short walk from Shujin’s entrance to the alleyway is unbearably awkward. It’s the first time that he and Ryuji have been alone since their argument in the attic, and the remaining tension hangs thick in the air. They pause just under the shadow of the buildings, at the exact same place that they always used to warp into Kamoshida’s castle back in April. For a moment, they stop and stare at each other.

Ryuji rubs at the back of his neck and starts to say, “Are you gonna-” at the same time that Akira blurts out, “Listen, about earlier-” 

Their words clash messily in midair, bringing them both to a screeching halt. They lapse into an uncomfortable silence again. Akira rubs his index finger in erratic movements across his thumb while Ryuji crosses his arms. Finally, Ryuji clears his throat. “You first.”

There’s a lot of things Akira could say. He could say, ‘ _I don’t understand why you’re so upset when nothing about this was ever normal to begin with.'_ He could say, ‘ _What right do you have to blame me for all of this?’_ He could say, ‘ _You deserve better.’_

He could say, _‘I’ve known you twenty different times, but I can’t tell which version of you is standing in front of me right now.'_

The words sit heavy on his tongue, but he swallows them back before they can escape into the empty air. Instead, he simply states, “I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”

Ryuji blinks rapidly, and then scoffs. It echoes in the alley. “Is that why you think I was mad?” Ryuji asks incredulously. “Because you’re stuck in a stupid - some stupid _time loop_ or whatever?”

Akira opens his mouth uselessly, but Ryuji barrels on. “It ain’t like _you_ control that crap! It’s just that -” he scrubs a hand through his bleached hair roughly, “- shit, why didn’t you -” he trails off, glaring deeper into the alley. “Dude, why didn’t you _tell_ us? Why didn’t you -” his voice stutters briefly “- why didn’t you trust _me_ enough? I could have, I dunno, I coulda been helpin’ you this whole time!" He takes a gulping breath. "Akira, I told you _everything_ , dude. About the track team, and my d-dad, and Kamoshida, but you just - you just never said anything!”

He finally looks back at Akira, and there’s unfiltered hurt in his eyes. “What did I do wrong?”

Akira can barely do anything but gawk. “You didn’t-”

“No, dude, I obviously _did,_ didn’t I? And I know you said that some of those other me’s were total a-holes about all this - who, by the way, I would beat the _hell_ outta - but what about _me?_ Now. _This me._ What the hell did _I_ do wrong?”

Akira’s nails bite into the skin of his palms, and he grits his teeth. “Ryuji, it’s complicated, alright?”

“ _How_ is it complicated? You coulda told me and you _didn’t!”_

The emotion bubbling in Akira’s chest isn’t quite anger, but it’s something close, white hot and choking. “I was trying to do everything the same! Like the very _first_ time, before any of this started happening! And you didn’t know then, so you couldn’t know now!”

“That’s crap and you know it! It’s not like _you_ knew the first time ‘round either!”

“So what else was I supposed to do?” Akira snaps, mounting frustration forcing the words to tumble out of him. “How else am I supposed to escape? I’ve tried everything and _nothing_ works! The first time was the closest I’ve gotten, and I couldn’t - I couldn’t let _anything_ get in the way of that!”

“Not even me?!”

“ _Especially_ not you!”

Silence. The air is punctuated by heaving breaths. Akira digs the heels of his hands hard against his eyes as he leans against the brick wall, letting his glasses get pushed higher onto his forehead as he revels in the darkness that the pressure brings. He doesn’t want Ryuji to see him like this - he doesn’t want _any_ of them to. His heart rabbits in his chest.

“Dude,” Ryuji starts, and then pauses. Finally, he mutters, “This is all _so_ messed up.”

That shocks a dry laugh out of Akira. “Yeah, no kidding.” He moves his hands away from his face to look at Ryuji. Quietly, he says, “I would never have let anything happen to you, you know.”

Ryuji tilts his head and crosses his arms loosely in front of him. “Yeah, I know.” His mouth twitches. “You’re still _you_ , dude, even though you’ve apparently been lying to me this whole time.” Akira winces, and Ryuji says, “But you’re done with that now, right? Now on, you an’ me, we’re gonna be on the same page. No more stupid secrets.”

Akira hesitates, barely long enough to be noticeable, and then parrots, “No more stupid secrets.” For a moment, he almost hears Lavenza whispering in his mind, reciting a familiar poem as she names Ryuji the Chariot. 

That’s all in his imagination. But this - him and Ryuji facing off in the same alley that they have been for decades now, with the same bond forging between them - _this_ is real.

Akira pushes away from the wall and adjusts the bag on his shoulder. “We should get going.”

“Gotta rescue that dumb cat again, don’t we?” Ryuji groans, and Akira relaxes. Things aren’t - they aren’t really okay, yet ( _and, how can he even expect them to be?_ _),_ but this dynamic is easy and familiar, and right now, Akira would grasp onto _anything_ easy and familiar.

The MetaNav _still_ isn’t on Akira’s phone, so Ryuji puts in Kamoshida’s keywords instead. Akira stamps down the irrational flare of jealousy at seeing the app on Ryuji’s phone rather than his own. It won’t even matter in an hour - one trip to the Metaverse is all that it will take for the app to appear on Akira’s phone too.

Soon, he’ll have access to the Metaverse and his personas again. Morgana and Yusuke will be joining up with the rest of the team. Then, when everything is as normal as he can force it to be, Akira can finally focus on the only thing that truly matters: destroying Yaldabaoth once and for all. 

The world warps around them, and when the flash of red-tinged vertigo fades, they find themselves in the shadow of the Palace rather than in a dingy alleyway. Instead of Ryuji in his slack casual clothes, it is Skull that stands before Akira, gunmetal gray outfit highlighted by the sickly purple hues emanating off of Kamoshida’s castle. He examines his armor, turning his arms and flexing his gloves before finally lifting a hand to trace his fingers over the edges of his intimidating mask. He grins. “Dude! It worked!”

The smile immediately slides off of his face and morphs into a scowl as he looks back at Akira. “I _know_ you said that you used to hide your persona around me, but you know you don’ have to do it anymore, right? Come on, just _transform_ already.” 

Akira doesn’t meet his eyes, instead staring down at his own bare hands in shock. He turns them over frantically, as if the familiar blood-red gloves will just appear if he looks for them hard enough. He finally runs one hand over his arm, feeling the stiff fabric of his Shujin uniform underneath his palm rather than Joker’s leather trench coat. It quickly travels up the length of his dark sleeve and over the wrong high collar until it finally touches his face. Instead of a sleek domino mask, his fingers meet the cold frames of his glasses. Dimly, Akira registers the tremor in his hands.

There’s concern in Ryuji’s voice when he prods, “Uh, Joker?”

Akira balls his fists and tenses his muscles in an attempt to simply _will_ his rebel’s outfit into being, searching for the comforting presence of Arsene in his mind to tug to the forefront. But instead of transforming into his other form in a wave of blue flames, nothing happens. No Joker appears. There’s just Akira, barren and horribly out of place against the surreal atmosphere of the Metaverse.

He finally looks up at Skull. Beyond him, there’s no perfect rectangular door, glowing an enticing cerulean and guarded by Justine’s small form like always. The entrance of the castle is suddenly menacing in a way that it hasn’t been since the very first time Akira had ever seen it, cloaked in darkness and completely void of the presence of the Velvet Room.

The Velvet Room has _never_ simply vanished. Even on April 9th, he could always summon his thief outfit and call for his personas the moment he stepped into the Metaverse.

Last night, Akira hadn't dreamt of the Velvet Room. No prison cell. No Caroline or Justine. No _Igor._

“I can’t,” Akira whispers, dread coiling in his stomach. “I can’t transform.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> I apologize for the unexpected hiatus between this chapter and the last one. These past few months have been way more mentally draining than expected, and fic writing was forced to take a backseat. I'm not planning on abandoning this fic though. I have so many plans for it that I'm excited to write to let it go now!
> 
> As the year comes to a close, I hope you're all staying safe and healthy. <3


	8. Chapter 8

Yusuke really had not intended to fall asleep. As a matter of fact, falling asleep was the worst possible course of action. Sleeping meant time lost, and as of this moment, time was too precious a thing for Yusuke to let escape from his grasp.

Yusuke fell asleep anyway. He blinks blearily up at his ceiling in the dim light of the dawning sun filtering into his room. Slowly, he pushes himself upright. He rubs his knuckles against his eyes childishly, banishing the last vestiges of sleep from his mind. He doesn’t even remember where the utter exhaustion of the night before had originated from, whether it be from his current, younger body’s fatigue or the recent, vivid memory of battling desperately within the Metaverse for the will of humanity, now serving only to act as a mental placebo that extended beyond the limits of time and space.

Because he had, in some way, managed to travel backwards in time. How he had managed to do so was still a complete mystery, yet he knows it to be the truth with absolute certainty. Yesterday, he had faced Madarame for the first time in months, and emerged from the encounter significantly worse for wear.

Sitting with crossed legs, Yusuke forcibly pulls himself back towards his previous task even as frustration at the situation bubbles within him. His body is sore from sleeping on the hard, wooden floor for the entire night rather than upon his thin futon merely a few feet away from his fallen form, but in hindsight, he was quite lucky that he had managed to fall asleep on the ground rather than on the sharpened tacks scattered around him. However, a few of his pathetic attempts at creating a workable lockpick appear to have been crushed. He shuffles the flimsy sticks of paper into his hand to examine them. They may still prove to be salvageable, but the material’s original weakness already places the possible endeavor at a major disadvantage. There was a reason that lockpicks were made out of hard metal.

He lets out a shaky breath and runs one hand through his hair. His fingers catch roughly on the tangles that have formed during the night. Slowly, he begins to unwork the knots, allowing himself a few moments to deliberate. There is a fairly high chance that Madarame will simply unlock the door soon, meaning that Yusuke’s attempts were ultimately futile. After all, Sensei could not keep Yusuke locked away forever without questions eventually being asked about his student’s untimely disappearance. Madarame’s behavior isn’t even truly out of the ordinary. His sensei’s humble facade easily ensnared the general public, but in his private moments, Yusuke had witnessed it crack. Madarame’s students were well aware of his pin-drop temper, learning early the signs of an oncoming storm of rage. It never lasted long, flashes of cruelty among honey-sweet smiles, but it was enough to leave all of his pupils on constant edge. Punishments were not rare in the atelier, and this imitation of a prison cell was among the most common.

But those were the large, tangible moments. Madarame’s anger was long-lasting, formulating into grudges that often extended for weeks. It translated into the constant scarcity of food within the atelier and the frequent power outages induced by the bills being paid intentionally late. Gaslighting that Yusuke had never recognized as being such, instead choosing to internalize the backhanded praise in the hopes of earning Madarame’s genuine affection. It was all behavior utterly unbecoming of an artist of Sensei’s stature - behavior utterly unbecoming of a human being, in general - but it had always presented itself in such a banal manner that Yusuke only truly acknowledged its oddity when his fellow students had dared to question the manipulative treatment aloud. And even then, he had allowed himself to be blinded. What a fool he had been until the rest of the Phantom Thieves had traipsed into his life.

Yusuke cannot rely on the inevitability of Madarame freeing him. The very thought of being in any way indebted to the man makes his blood boil. He grits his teeth and glares down at the failed lockpicks.

He removes his hand from his head to pluck one of the paper sticks out of his palm. The paper layers that formed it were thin and flimsy, and no matter his attempts to strengthen them by binding them together, they refused to have the force needed to maneuver the inside of the lock. Several of the lockpicks were mashed on their ends because of his desperate attempts to do so, with no success.

He’s been going about this all wrong, hasn’t he?

It’s paper. He’s working with _paper._ Paper has no inherent strength to it, and this brand in particular is incredibly cheap and prone to tears. He cannot expect the paper to change from anything but what it is simply by folding them on top of one another in neat, straight strips!

What do you do with paper? The obvious use for paper is to sketch, but in this moment, his art will prove useless. Lines of charcoal will do nothing but dirty the material that he needs.

There is another use for paper, of course. _Origami._

Unwrapping the folded paper into their original forms is tedious and requires quite a lot of time spent pressing them furiously against the floor in an attempt to flatten the creases, but he eventually manages to wrestle a few of them into a somewhat satisfactory imitation of their shape before he mutilated them.

Origami isn’t Yusuke’s speciality. However, he is aware of the basics, the folds needed to make precise lines and shapes. His mind feels significantly clearer after a few hours of snagged sleep, but it still takes him a much longer amount of time than he would prefer to make them into a suitable form. By the end, he has a handful of makeshift lockpicks that are significantly sturdier than before. Briefly, he curls his fist around them and takes a deep breath. Then, he pushes himself to his feet. He needs to act.

A brief wave of vertigo overtakes him as he stands upright, and he stumbles slightly, unbalanced, before managing to steady himself and rush to the door. He checks the handle first to ensure that Madarame had not unlocked it during the night, but it barely moves in his grip. He lets it go to press his ear against the door and is relieved to hear nothing on the other side but silence.

He stacks two of the lockpicks on top of each other and shimmies them into the slim hole in the handle, awkwardly finessing the sticks into place. It takes quite a lot of trial and error, but his relief when the door finally gives a faint click is so great that he nearly collapses to the ground.

At a snail’s pace, he inches the door open. The audible squeak of the hinges makes Yusuke wince, but the corridor is completely devoid of life. The overhead light is on, which is worrying, but Madarame himself is nowhere to be found.

As he eases out into the hallway, Yusuke comes to the realization that he does not, actually, have a plan as to how to leave. He doesn’t know where exactly Madarame is located within the atelier or if he had some sort of event planned that required his presence and had therefore abandoned the shack. The only exit in the building was the front door, but was it even safe to leave through that way? What if Yusuke was spotted?

There is more inherent danger to standing frozen in indecision in the hallway than actually moving, so Yusuke automatically migrates to the room closest: the art studio. The door is still thrown open from his brief fight against Madarame the day before, and he slips into the quiet room with little effort. He’s relieved to see his phone strewn haphazardly on the ground in front of his unfinished painting and swoops to pick it up. For a moment, his eye catches on his abandoned artwork. The harried slash of scarlet that he remembers creating in his panic has all but vanished. Black detail work is layered on top of it and blended into Yusuke’s own lines to hide the ugly gash, as if the event that premeditated it had never even occurred. Unbidden, a rush of disappointment crashes through him. Physically hiding Yusuke away was not enough for Madarame, it seems. Even his mistakes had to be erased from existence, lest they be frowned upon by Sensei’s critics.

Yusuke itches to reach for his fallen paintbrush and recreate the gruesome crimson mark. He shakes his head and turns to his phone instead. Now was not the time to try and reclaim his own work from Madarame’s scheming hands.

He is greeted to dozens of notifications. None of the numbers are listed, but he is able to identify the names of his friends amongst their text messages, alongside their several worried mentions of himself. It appears that all of them are in the same bizarre time traveling situation as Yusuke, then. He doesn’t know how they managed to gain each other’s numbers, but the knowledge that they had all traveled together makes something in his chest unclench. At least he isn’t alone this time.

He enters the groupchat, ready to assure his friends of his presence, when he hears the front door loudly unlock. He whips around in panic to the sound of it opening with an ominous creak.

Yusuke comes up with a plan.

He exits out of his messages and rapidly scrolls through his apps to locate the MetaNav. He’d never had to enter Madarame’s keywords himself, but he can easily guess what they may be.

He hesitates before pressing the final navigation button. What about the rest of his friends? The last few messages had mentioned them traveling towards Shibuya. Instead of starting the navigation, he reverts back to his messaging app, fingers flying across the keyboard.

“YUSUKE!!!” Madarame shouts from down the hall, dangerously close to the studio’s entrance. Yusuke freezes. Madarame must have seen the door to his bedroom still open wide, with his ward nowhere to be seen. He can hear Sensei marching angrily down the corridor. In mere moments, he will find Yusuke, and this entire endeavor will be for naught.

Hurriedly, Yusuke presses send on the messaging app and returns to the MetaNav. He manages to warp to Madarame’s Palace barely a second before his sensei rounds the corner.

When he opens his eyes behind his familiar kitsune mask, he’s immediately greeted to the sight of a shadow vaguely taking the form of a mutated security guard. For a moment, it seems to stare back at him in shock, before erupting into several different enemies with a shriek. The various shadows take no time to completely surround him.

“Damn,” Fox hisses, before summoning Kamu Susano-o and getting to work.

* * *

After the initial elation of being reunited, the atmosphere between Makoto, Ann, Futaba and Haru fizzles into a silent anxiety. The only sound is the quiet volume of the news program playing from a screen attached to the car’s ceiling. The anchor appears to be just as bored with the news she’s currently reporting as the rest of them are, but with nothing left to focus on but nervousness about their situation, the girls find themselves riveted.

The breaking news of the underground trains barreling off of the rails is groundbreaking to none of them, but they all collectively flinch when the anchor announces it. Futaba nestles further into her seat. “Well, that answers _that_ question, I guess,” she mutters.

Makoto nods in agreement. Whether or not the train accident would actually happen was a fact that none of them had truly been positive about, and she feels horrible about the reassurance that its occurrence inspires within her. People had died, and here she was, happy that it meant that the timeline was currently intact.

Was this how Akira felt, all the time? How could he possibly stand it? Makoto had only been in this new timeline for two days, but she already felt wracked with guilt. Privately, she had always likened the Phantom Thieves to something akin to the champions of old comic books, saving lives from the shadows. How could they still claim to call themselves heroes if they let innocent civilians die when they had ample opportunities to prevent it?

Thankfully, Makoto doesn’t appear to be the only one who feels the same way. Looking slightly nauseous, Ann reaches around Futaba to mute the reporter. The crawl continues reporting the known casualties, but they are all too familiar with the news to stand hearing about it for a second time. The cars around them have all ground to a halt, already feeling the effects of the sudden train cancellations.

It doesn’t take long for boredom to set in. “Ugh,” Ann throws her head back against the headrest in frustration, “we would get there faster if we walked!”

Haru’s driver glances back at her through the rearview mirror, alarmed by her implicit threat, but Haru pats at his arm in reassurance from her place on the front seat. “Don’t worry, Tatsuma-san. We can all stand to wait a bit longer, can’t we?”

“Yeah, sure,” Futaba grumbles, crossing her arms. Bracketed tightly between Makoto and Ann, it was impossible for her to curl up in her seat like she usually preferred. She compensates by rapidly bouncing her leg and ignoring the disapproving glances that Makoto continues to unsubtly point her way. Traffic is at a complete stand-still - how Haru still had anything close to patience was an utter mystery. Futaba exclaims, “This is taking forever! At this rate, Akira and Ryuji are gonna beat us there!”

Makoto turns away from them to gaze out the window. She can see her own reflection faintly in the glass, eyebrows pinched and lips downturned. It’s a superficial thing to notice, but her hair is shorter than what she remembered it being two days ago. She had cut it before the school year began. It must have grown out over the course of the year, but with the increasingly bizarre events that had commanded her attention, she’d hardly realized. The physical reminder of their situation jars her, and she can’t help but shiver.

The car hasn’t moved for quite some time, and Ann and Futaba’s frustration was contagious. Makoto forces herself to stop twisting her fingers aimlessly in her lap - an old nervous tic - and instead shakily smoothes out the shallow wrinkles in her skirt.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Makoto starts, folding her hands together and refusing to look at her friends, “about what Akira said after we got back.”

“What’s that, Mako-chan?” Haru asks, turning around fully in her seat to face them. Her driver winces at the action but makes no comment.

Makoto clears her throat and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, hyper-aware of the way that her friends are now staring at her. “I mean, when we were all in the attic. We were discussing last April, and Ryuji mentioned that he-”

As one, all of the phones in the car ping. Makoto cuts herself off abruptly as she rushes to check the group chat alongside the others. Akira and Ryuji should still be in Kamoshida’s Palace right now, which meant that the message could only have come from-

“Inari!” Futaba shouts. Makoto leans forward in her seat as she reads, hands shaking as she cradles her phone. She’s unbuckling her seat belt before she even consciously realizes she’s doing so, mind racing as she registers what Yusuke has written.

“Actually,” Haru tells her driver, pleasant voice lingering just on the edge of panic as Ann unlocks her own car door and steps out onto the frozen highway, with Futaba scrambling out just behind her, “I think that we _will_ be walking the rest of the way.”

* * *

By the time Fox finally stumbles into the calming aura of a safe room, he is certifiably winded. He is certain that the Life Stone that he had managed to scrounge out of a stray treasure chest is the only reason that he is not walking a definite limp, but his abdomen still twinges in pain as he throws himself onto a plush chair. The room briefly shimmers around him, the walls of the museum morphing into the familiar trappings of the atelier before settling back into the distortion.

Yusuke rests his head in his hands, fighting off an oncoming headache. With his experience, the enemies themselves no longer posed a significant challenge. However, several of them are equipped with fire powers, and the sheer number of shadows lurking around the corners of the museum’s mazes makes it impossible for him to avoid every fight. With no access to healing magic or items, Fox has no possible room for error. It is a task that is much easier said than done. As well, each of Kamu Susano-o’s attacks seemed to sap more of his energy than he remembered it ever taking before. His mind was still readily accustomed to his prior power, but his body found itself lacking the same strength.

It does not help that Fox has no idea as to where in the Palace that he is located. The MetaNav had dropped him straight into a random gallery, and with no map to guide him, he had chosen a direction to travel merely upon a whim. He has yet to find any distinguishing features in the museum that informs him as to whether he is currently fighting his way towards the exit or simply wandering farther into the heart of Madarame’s distortion.

Regardless, he cannot afford to give up now. The rest of the Phantom Thieves are scheduled to arrive soon, and being defeated before their appearance is not an option. Sitting idly in a safe room will only disguise his location from the others, and the very idea of complete inaction makes him clench his fists in anger. No, there is little pride in hiding away because of a prolonged cowardice at the prospect of battling weak enemies alone.

With the comforting presence of his persona in the forefront of his mind, Fox makes his way to the safe room door and once again sneaks out into the hallway.

* * *

Ann overestimated her own physical abilities, because the grueling trek from the highway to the atelier leaves her legs shaky and chest heaving. The others aren’t much better as they finally come to a stop outside of Madarame’s shack. Futaba immediately flops to the ground with a groan, exhaustion evident in every line of her body as she pants. Even Makoto and Haru seem winded from the long journey as the sun climbs steadily higher into the sky. None of their bodies are nearly as prepared for the prolonged exercise as they would have been before they were sent back in time.

Even so, Ann feels victorious as she wipes beads of sweat from her forehead. The cars had barely inched down the road as they had all marched between them with undeniable purpose, and the multiple people crowding Shibuya hardly paid attention to their group as they navigated their way through Central Street. They haven’t even entered Madarame’s Palace, but satisfaction runs through her veins nonetheless.

Massaging her side absentmindedly, Makoto gazes up at the shack. “So this is it?” she asks Ann.

It’s the same as Ann remembers it being. It’s still ever so slightly _creepy_ in its decrepit state amongst the perfectly manicured buildings next to it, and for a moment, she’s cast back to her first time visiting it. She can vividly imagine ringing the doorbell, chattering with the rest of the original Phantom Thieves as she did so and hoping to find any clues proving Madarame’s rumored plagiarism. Instead, it was Yusuke who had opened the creaky door, worryingly gaunt and pale even as his tired eyes lit up at the sight of her.

Despite the horrible circumstances of the moment, the memory causes an unexpected rush of nostalgia. Things had been so much simpler, back then.

“Yeah, this is it,” Ann confirms.

Futaba gives a tired thumbs up from her resting place on the pavement. “Then let’s fire ‘er up!”

“As soon as possible, please,” Haru says with a grimace, and Ann pulls out her phone. Entering the correct keywords is much easier than it had been the first time around, and it doesn’t take long for the MetaNav to announce their navigation route. Her gaze flicks up briefly to see the handle on Madarame’s front door begin to turn ominously, but the four of them vanish from reality before anyone can spot them.

Panther breathes a sigh of relief as soon as she recognizes Madarame’s gaudy Palace in front of her. She’s wearing her rebel’s outfit, but for once, the showy red design doesn’t make her feel self-conscious. The exhaustion of only a few seconds ago has completely disappeared, leaving her body reinvigorated. Hecate is a welcome presence in her mind, and Ann can already sense fire at her fingertips.

The sentiment is seemingly reflected by her companions even as they take in their surroundings in a mild state of shock. None of them had been around to see the art museum like Panther had, and the sight of it causes them to briefly freeze. She remembers the emotions that it had initially evoked in her: wonder at its ugly grandeur that had quickly morphed into pure fury at what its very existence implied.

Oracle is the first to recover, retreating into Prometheus’ glowing interior to properly scan the Palace. Her disembodied voice surrounds them. “Well, Fox is definitely here,” she confirms. “I can sense the energy from his persona, but it’s really faint. Good news, though! Most of the shadows here are the same ones we fight in Chemdah at Mementos. They shouldn’t be a real challenge for you guys.”

“Wonderful,” Queen says. She turns to Panther. “Will you be able to lead us through the Palace?”

“Probably,” Ann says, and when she’s met with identical disbelieving stares, she quickly amends, “Yes.”

Noir gives her a smile and gestures towards the museum with a flourish, the Palace’s pompous nature only serving to emphasize her usual flare for the dramatics. “After you, then!”

Ann has never had some sort of leadership role in, well, _anything,_ really, but especially in nothing pertaining to the Metaverse. Any responsibilities had always fallen to Joker, and if not him, Queen or the navigators. Even _Akechi_ had stepped up during the days that they’d spent exploring Sae’s casino more than Panther ever had. She doesn’t consider herself in any way weak for not taking a more assertive role in the team, but Panther has to admit that there was a certain thrill to guiding the rest of the Phantom Thieves through Madarame’s Palace. Hopping over the heads of the shadows in the courtyard and sneaking through the galleries is easier than she remembers, and they even stop to loot the few treasure chests that they find along the way. Between the three of them and Oracle’s occasional interventions, the enemies go down in only a few hits.

However effortless that the fights may have been, when they finally reach the empty front desk lined with maps, they have no hesitation about falling onto the plush couches. They’re not in a safe room, but the lobby has been completely cleared of the weak shadows and serves well enough as a place to regroup before traveling past the huge, gaudy statue that marked the entrance to the rest of the museum and its extensive, maze-like galleries.

As Oracle types away at her laptop, Noir looks back to where they’d come with a pained expression. The sordid paintings of Madarame’s students are well out of their sights, but Panther can tell that they’re still bothering Haru. “How could Madarame view his own students like that?” she asks. “They all put so much trust in him, and he just-” Noir trails off, staring down at her black gloves. “I can’t imagine the betrayal that Yus-kun must have felt.”

Panther and Queen exchange alarmed looks. Noir hadn’t exactly been surprised when she’d finally witnessed the truths of what her father thought of the world. Saddened, yes, but not shocked. She already knew that the man who had raised her had seen everyone in his life as exposable. Accepting the reality of the situation wasn’t difficult, because at least Okumura had always been upfront about his intentions.

Madarame hadn’t been. Everything Madarame had ever said was a perfectly crafted lie designed to make people let their guards down, presenting himself as a humble old man who wasn’t morally capable of doing wrong. _Of course_ Yusuke had fallen for it. They all had.

“Yusuke knows now,” Panther says haltingly, “about Madarame, and what he did to him.”

 _(But just because he_ knows _doesn’t truly mean acceptance or healing. Ann remembers Yusuke gathering her, Ryuji, and Akira into Leblanc, desperate to break through the intense artist’s block that had plagued him since Madarame’s confession. Even though he had_ seemed _fine enough, Ann hadn’t failed to notice the worried glances Akira kept shooting his way, as if Yusuke was something fragile.)_

_(Then again, ‘fragile’ was not a word that would describe Yusuke in a million years.)_

Queen nods in agreement. “That’s right,” she assures Noir. “It must have hurt him, but I know that he wouldn’t want to go back to how it was before, even if it appeared to be simpler back then. Knowing about it doesn’t make it okay, but it’s better than ignorance. All there is left to do now is to keep fighting beyond it.”

There’s an intensity in Queen’s tone as she says it, and Panther doesn’t think that any of them are actually talking about Madarame and Yusuke anymore. From the conflicted expression on Noir’s face, she thinks that Haru may agree.

Oracle shuts her laptop with a loud clatter. It shimmers out of sight as soon as her hands leave it, returning back to whatever pocket dimension that their weapons and items disappear to until the moment that they become needed again. Having an invisible, mental locker for the dozens of supplies that they regularly carry with them was the most useful feature of the Metaverse that any of them had discovered so far. “Fox is getting closer,” Futaba updates them. She taps her ear. “He’s not close enough to get in contact yet, but I don’t think it’ll be long. My guess is that we’ll run into each other somewhere in the next few rooms.”

Panther brightens. “Awesome! That means we can leave soon!”

Oracle snorts. “Yeah, no _kidding._ This Palace is crazy easy. How underleveled were you guys when you infiltrated this place?” Without waiting for an answer, she groans. “Ugh, do you think we’re gonna have to walk back to Leblanc when we get outta here? I don’t even remember what Noir’s driver looks like!”

“Um,” Panther starts, but Queen stands with determination before Ann can stammer through some semblance of a plan.

“We’ll figure that out later,” Queen tells them, “ _after_ we get Fox back.” She looks over them all critically. “We shouldn’t linger here any longer than we already have. As easy as these enemies have proven to be, the last thing we want is to be ambushed.”

Panther looks at Noir, worried that their earlier conversation had been too upsetting for her to properly continue, but her face is wiped clear, eyebrows set in determination and shoulders squared as she rises to her feet. She runs one hand along the wide brim of her hat gracefully. “We need to find Fox,” she declares, and disappears into the corridor leading to the circular room without looking back.

“R-right,” Ann agrees, a ripple of confusion passing through her at Noir’s sudden attitude change. Glancing at Queen and Oracle, the feeling is apparently shared. Panther shrugs at them before hurrying to catch up.

The three of them find her staring up at Madarame’s golden statue. They have to crane their necks to see it in its entirety, the gleaming exterior extending to touch the high ceiling. Panther knows that abstract art is meant to have some sort of deeper meaning, but to her, the gaudy display is just plain _ugly._

“That certainly is large,” Oracle comments blandly.

Panther tears her eyes away to look around the rest of the familiar room. “This is where Yusuke awakened his persona,” she says. Even though she’d been restrained by the museum guards behind him at the time, she still remembers it clearly. Panther couldn’t see his face, but she could see _Madarame’s,_ the way that it went completely slack as Yusuke spoke, arrogance draining away at the sight of his pupil rising against him. Trails of blood were scratched into the floor, and the entire room had chilled with the encroaching ice radiating from Yusuke as Goemon finally burst out of him in a wave of frozen air.

It had been the first time that Ann had seen someone else awaken their persona, and it had been awe-inspiring in its terror. _‘Beauty and vice,’_ Yusuke had described it to them later with a far-away look in his normally sharp eyes. _‘Both, yet simultaneously neither.’_

The way that Yusuke spoke of Goemon’s awakening was nothing like how Ann had felt with Carmen. Then again, their elements weren’t opposing for no reason at all.

Panther shakes her head. “We should get out of here,” she tells the others. “I don’t wanna run into Madarame’s Shadow by accident.”

“Lead the way,” Queen says, voice strangely hushed. It feels appropriate.

Thankfully, Shadow Madarame does not appear as they walk up the curved ramp to reach the next gallery. It was much more difficult to ignore the enemies as they navigate the winding mazes to find the exit, but clearing them out proves more tiring than hard.

As soon as the group steps out into the hallway, a smirk curls on Oracle’s mouth, and she ascends into Prometheus’ waiting orb. Her disembodied voice echoes around Panther. “Fancy seeing you here, Inari,” Futaba says, and Panther sags in relief.

Panther can’t hear Yusuke’s response, but whatever it is makes Oracle laugh. There’s a tinge of genuine concern behind her teasing tone as she replies, and the conversation quickly turns into a series of instructions as Oracle guides both parties towards each other. It’s disconcerting to only hear one half of their conversation, but the knowledge that they’re even in contact with each other makes hope bloom in Ann’s chest. Soon, they’ll have found Yusuke and met up with the boys and Morgana. The only way to fight their way out of this crazy mess was to all be together, and they were finally one step closer to that becoming a reality.

When they finally meet in the middle, Panther’s group and Fox all but crash into each other. There’s an ugly bruise peeking out from under his mask and he has a hand pressed against the side of his puffy black tunic. He stumbles to a stop, eyes widening as he takes them in. Ann rushes forward to throw her arms around him in a hug. She doesn’t miss the way that he stiffens in her tight embrace, softly hissing in pain.

Before she can step away with an apology already prepared on the tip of her tongue, a pleasant sensation trickles down her spine. Immediately, the residual soreness in her muscles fades before disappearing completely. Ann smiles. She would know the soothing aura of Queen’s Mediarahan anywhere.

Injuries vanishing, Fox finally relaxes in her grip. Noir seems to take it as an open invitation to join Panther’s hug and quickly latches onto the two of them. Queen and Oracle don’t quite join in their impromptu cuddle pile, but they hover nearby, close enough that Panther can feel the heat of their bodies against hers.

Squashed in the middle and rendered absolutely immobile, Yusuke finally manages to get out, “Hello.”

Noir giggles. “Hello, Fox! It’s wonderful to see you again!”

“You as well.” Yusuke has never been the most physical person, and Ann can hear the vein of discomfort in his voice when he says, “May I, ah-”

Panther gives him one more squeeze before finally backing away. Oracle adjusts her goggles and rocks onto the balls of her feet. “Can we finish this little meet and greet later?” she asks. “We should get to a safe room pronto.”

“We have quite a lot to catch up on,” Queen adds.

“Yes,” Fox agrees drily. “I would imagine that we do.”

* * *

Soon after entering Madarame’s Palace, Yusuke had used his first moment of relative safety to read through the recent messages in the Phantom Thieves’ group chat. It was easy enough to assign the correct names to the unregistered numbers, but the contents of the slew of messages had felt strangely incomplete. It was obvious that the other members had somehow managed to convene momentarily after being cast backwards in time - a fact that caused an unwelcome rush of jealousy within him - but none of their messages had conveyed what they had spoken of other than their immediate future plans. It was not entirely unreasonable that they did not think to recapture their conversation over texts for Yusuke’s benefit, so there was little for him to glean from the context they had provided. Some things were better explained in-person rather than over a digital medium.

However, he does think that it is fair to expect some sort of warning to preface Futaba bluntly informing him of the stark realities of their sudden romp into the past, most particularly in concern to their leader.

The chuckle that escapes his throat at the news is ever so slightly deranged. The gathered Phantom Thieves can’t help but stare at him disbelievingly as his laughter fluctuates, flaring louder before dying down just as quickly.

“This isn’t funny at all,” Fox says into the empty air.

“Of course it isn’t!” Queen snaps, and several of the room’s occupants flinch back at her harsh tone. They’re all sitting around a table in a safe room, exactly as they do when they hold regular meetings in routine palace runs, as if half of their members aren’t missing and their strategy is still as simple as ‘find an infiltration route to the treasure and then send a calling card.’

Yusuke tilts his head and muses, “However, I don’t find myself entirely surprised.” At their matching baffled expressions, he raises an eyebrow at the rest of the room. “Am I alone in that assessment?” Yusuke has never claimed to have an exceptionally high emotional intelligence, but life-altering revelations have become increasingly common in his life.

“Yes!” Haru says. With her French-inspired attire, Yusuke cannot help but think about how little she fits into the preferred pieces displayed in Madarame’s galleries. As varying as the styles presented in the museum were, Madarame greatly favored Japanese artwork rather than the western design that Noir was clad in. It was classically elegant in comparison to most of the outfits of their teammates, but still woefully out of place against her surroundings. The aesthetics of the museum befit none of them.

He shuts his eyes, attempting to push away his instinctive artistic observations in order to focus on the serious subject matter of their present conversation. “No, Inari’s right,” Futaba says. She shrinks back when everyone else turns on her, but manages to continue, “‘kira’s always been sort of weird, hasn’t he?”

“You’re one to talk,” Ann mutters.

Futaba ignores her and turns to face Yusuke. “You noticed it too! I’m glad it wasn’t just me. I thought I might’ve been going crazy.”

“Noticed what?” Makoto asks, exasperated and noticeably frustrated at being kept out of the loop.

Futaba shrugs. “He just always seemed to know everything. Nothing really threw him off. At first I thought it was because he’s my key item and so it was all just in my head, but I’m not really sure anymore.”

“Intuitive people do exist,” Yusuke points out, “but I agree. While his calming nature is grounding to those of us in need of moral assistance, his lack of shock at a myriad of our most dramatic experiences proved slightly disorienting to me.”

“So you both knew about this already?” Makoto asks.

“I mean, _no,”_ Futaba says. “Who thinks that? ‘Oh, you’re super chill all the time, you're obviously a time traveler!’”

“It is a conclusion that borders on insanity,” Yusuke adds, “but of course, the Metaverse has revealed stranger truths.”

“How is time travel _not_ the strangest truth?” Ann asks. “It’s like something out of a sci-fi show!”

Yusuke meets her gaze coolly. “Both the Metaverse and science fiction have a rather large emphasis on the practice of dismantling common falsehoods in order to reveal a world unknown. I find that they fit together rather well.”

“What he said,” Futaba chimes in. She stretches and gets to her feet. “Well, whatever. We can’t really do that much about it right now. We should get out of this place soon before Madarame’s Shadow figures out that we’re hiding out here.”

Fox grimaces. He’d rather not have to hear whatever his former sensei had to say to him within the Metaverse when Madarame had just revealed how explosive he could truly act in reality. The comparison promised to be uglier than Yusuke cared to witness. “Yes, we should escape this garish place whilst the chance still readily presents itself.” He rises out of chair. “Regardless, I would like to continue this conversation at a later time. Our leader obviously chose to conceal his bizarre situation from us for a reason, and I would rather hear any justifications from his own mouth instead of continuing to blindly speculate.”

Queen purses her lips in displeasure before acquiescing. Fox cannot stop the sigh of relief that escapes him when Shadow Madarame fails to appear as the five of them retreat to the Palace’s entrance. Combat proves to be significantly easier with the help of his fellow Phantom Thieves, but it still proves to be exhausting. It appears that their well of stamina was not nearly as deep as it once was, even as their attacks maintained the same fortitude as they had while standing in front of Yaldabaoth.

Warping to the front door of the atelier leaves a sense of distaste in Yusuke alongside the satisfaction at his successful escape from Madarame’s clutches. He nearly stumbles when Haru pushes against his back urgently, no match against her carefully hidden strength. “We should leave before Madarame sees you,” she cautions.

He nods, and together, the Phantom Thieves seamlessly blend into the bustling crowd of the still-panicked residents of Shibuya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how well it translated, so I'll put a more in depth explanation here about how their powers work.
> 
> In my mind, they were all around Level 96 when they confronted Yaldabaoth, and their various SP and HP counts reflected that. However, power in the Metaverse has some sort of physical component, as evidenced by the copious amount of times Akira has to go to the gym. 
> 
> I imagine that, mentally, the Phantom Thieves were able to successfully project something closer to what they were used to than what their current bodies can handle, but not by much. Here, I imagine that the Phantom Thieves would be around Level 27 - higher than what they would be at this point in canon, but not by an extremely significant amount. Because their attacks are still as strong as they were when they left, they get tired much easier.
> 
> On a related note, Akira would be around Level 64 at this point. Over time, he got better at mentally projecting his own Metaverse strengths through time, and the rest of the Phantom Thieves have not had nearly the same amount of practice. He has to actively try to hide the disparity in power levels from his teammates, because he really has no valid excuse as to why he's so much higher. Futaba has her suspicions, but like she said, she wouldn't immediately jump to "time travel" as the answer.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first real attempt at a multi-chapter story, so we'll see how it goes!
> 
> [Title inspired by the song "Do You Wonder" by khai dreams]
> 
> (Follow me on tumblr @frigidlyauthorial if you're a fan of self-promotion. I'd love to chat with you all!)


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